Reverse
by Lady Moonglow
Summary: Hermione is transferred to an alternate reality where the bad are good, the good are bad, and Dumbledore is Dark Lord. All those who attempted resistance under Tom Riddle and Draco Malfoy have absolutely no hope left...until the new Hermione arrives.HG/DM
1. Prologue

**Summary:** During the final battle, Hermione is transferred to an alternate reality where the bad as she has always known them are good and the good as she has always known them are bad, where Dumbledore rules as a Dark Lord, Slytherins are the resident Gryffindors, and she herself is a brainless beauty queen called 'My.' All those who once attempted resistance under the leadership of Tom Riddle, Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy have absolutely no hope left at all… until the new Hermione arrives.

Hermione just wants to get back to her own world… What will she do when this new world's versions of the people she always thought she'd despise are wholly different from the ones she had always known? Will she try to save the world she's trapped in and the people she never imagined she would want to help? HG/DM, more pairings TBA, HBP friendly.

**IMPORTANT NOTE: **I sketched out the outline of this story long before Book 7 was published. The facts inside it follow canon only up until and including Book 6. Thus, it will be **AU AFTER HBP… No Horcruxes/storyline from Deathly Hallows included. **If that upsets you, don't read on and/or don't say I didn't warn you. The Prologue takes place a year and a half after HBP occurred.

**Author's Note: **I know that, after Have You Ever, I said I was done with fan fiction. I lied. Well, not really, because at the time, I really thought I was. Now, though, I've got a bit of extra time, this story has been practically begging me to write it for years (some of you may have even seen it out there before; this time I'm keeping it under my original name), and, as I'm planning to partly go into Journalism, I think it'd be a good way to work on my writing skills. So here I am.

I will warn that this is much, MUCH darker than Have You Ever ever was, as it's going to deal with some very dark/mature topics. It's rated T for a reason, and that rating may even go up in future chapters. So keep that in mind as you begin reading, as well as the fact that this is definitely AU in that it is independent of all facts given after HBP. Main ship will assuredly be HG/DM, but it doesn't happen right away, and the plot has a much broader focus than the romance of it all.

Okay. Long notes over. On with the story.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything that you may even remotely recognize.

**REVERSE**

Prologue

Monday, August 28, 1:32 A.M.

It came in flashes.

Thunder.

Rain. Blinding, frigid rain.

Debilitating wind, so strong it almost blew even Hagrid over.

Screams; wails of pain; spine tingling laughs of delight; shouts; moans.

Hardly any light save the typically fatal, multicolored crisscross beams of wand fire, and the occasional spark of lightning that illuminated the most haunting vista Hermione had ever seen:

A field. It had been just an ordinary field in the middle of nowhere, probably, until that night.

And bodies were everywhere.

Masked with the faces of both friends and foes, some of them were recognizable. Some were not.

Old enmities emerged the minute Ron saw the back of Draco Malfoy's unmistakable blond head across the battlefield, an Order member down at the end of his wand, and, presumably, a Dark Curse. It was supposed to be 'a cinch,' Ron told her with a sloppy grin, her personal favorite of his many smiles, and then became serious again, urging her and Harry on while he went and dealt with the ferret who had betrayed Dumbledore and the Light the year before.

Ron never came back.

At least, not before The Duel began, and whether he came back afterward Hermione would never know. All she _did_ know was that, one second, Harry was beside her, and the next second he wasn't, and Voldemort's red eyes, far too close for comfort, were unmistakable in the very near darkness.

And then it began.

Hermione was so busy fighting for her life that she missed most of it. A Stunning spell grazed her shoulder; clutching her rucksack, she flew halfway across the field, but it was mild enough that she was able to whip around in time to send a Reductor squarely into her assailant's chest, visible in a flash of lightning, in the same breath shouting a Confounding charm toward a Death Eater who was nearly on top of Remus Lupin –

_Avada kedavra. _

They were only two words, shouted simultaneously and carried on the wind, but perhaps every person on the battlefield, Hermione included, froze the second that they were uttered.

For a moment, neither Death Eater nor Order member breathed.

Abruptly, though, another burst of lightening exploded, revealing that Harry was upright. Granted, he was on his knees, but he was still alive.

Voldemort was not.

Hermione stood, stunned into paralysis as the lightning faded and the scene plunged back into darkness and sounds of absolute chaos. Her mouth fell open, but shut just as quickly in absolute disbelief. Was it over? Had they won? They… they had! They _had _won; Harry had killed him, it was over!

Sweet Merlin, it was over…

They had_ won! _

"HARRY!" she shrieked, her soaked hand pumping the otherwise useless rucksack into the air as an indescribable wave of triumph rushed over her. She blindly stumbled forward in the dark in a desperate, choking desire to get to her best friend, to sweep him into her arms, to victoriously scream to heaven and hell and anyone who was listening that it was _finally finished -_

But her words were drowned out in the thunder and jubilant yells that followed… as was the incantation behind the sparkling diamond light that emerged down from nothing but darkness. Before she could even comprehend what was happening, it had cleanly penetrated her abdomen with an almost inhuman screech – was it her own? – and an excruciating explosion of agony as if her body itself was being ripped apart.

And then… light. Beautiful, invigorating light, and a nearly overwhelming wave of relief. Thank the gods, she had not died.

But, as Hermione was soon to discover, that was the moment when the real darkness began.

**A/N: **Sorry, I know that's a bit short to start with, but that's a prologue for you. Next chapter is where it gets interesting. What am I forgetting… ? Oh! Reviews make my day. :-)

Cheers all.

LM


	2. A Different World

**A Different World**

Monday, August 28, 4:32 P.M.

"My? Are you all there, pet? My-y…"

'_Your' what? Wha… What happened? Where am I?_

"My. Oi, Harry, d'you think she's breathing?"

_If it's me who you're referring to, then of course I am, you idiot._

_Wait, is that Ron? And… Harry! They're alive! We're… we're alive! We all made it! __**Ron**__ made it!_

"Harry!" Hermione gasped out, sucking in a surprised breath and lurching forward. Her brown eyes flew open in time to see a strangely clean and well-dressed Ron and Harry jump slightly at what must have been, to them, a rather sudden motion on her part.

"Whoa there, pet," Ron said loudly, probably in order to be heard over the noisy, train-like rumble shaking the ground around her. He straightened his robes and gave Harry, across from him, an expression that was strangely… like a sneer. But Ron didn't sneer, nor did he _ever_ wear his hair slicked back like it was now, like – Hermione suppressed a shudder – like _Draco Malfoy_ had worn it during her time at Hogwarts, before that horrible incident at the end of sixth year.

_And…__**'pet?'**_

_Honestly, what is this? _she scoffed in confusion, staring at the redhead in bewilderment while quickly taking in her surroundings. Instantly, she distinctly recognized the Head Boy/Girl compartment of the Hogwarts Express – or, rather, the floor of it, fully decorated in rich reds and elegant golds.

_Wait… What about the war? Have I been in a coma? Are we already going back to finish what we missed of seventh year?_

Her narrowed eyes darted from Ron, who looked distinctly annoyed as he sat back on the plush train bench with no move to help her, to Harry, who studied her briefly before dusting off his own school robes and lifting himself back to his seat with a very atypical sort of imperial regality about his moments, to Ginny, who was nonchalantly sitting beside him wearing even more makeup than usual. For some reason that Hermione's dazed mind couldn't quite put its finger on, the redhead's head appeared to be uncharacteristically dirty as said girl stared interestedly at polished red nails.

As if the final battle had never happened.

But it _had_ just happened! They were all there!

... Weren't they?

"Wait a minute," Hermione said slowly, pushing herself back up onto the open seat behind her, beside Ron. "What's going on?"

Abruptly, she noticed that she was in a Hogwarts uniform herself.

At a basic, instinctive level, Hermione realized that something about this entire thing was horribly off. Her heart started to hammer as badly as it had during the final battle, and she fought to breathe evenly. Was she… dead? Dying? Was this some sort of 'life flashing before one's eyes' phenomenon before she died?

But… No, she had never remembered Ron acting like this before, so that couldn't be it…

Harry, obviously oblivious to her racing mind, leaned back and ran his hand through his hair in a motion that he usually tried to avoid because it reminded him too much of the arrogant side of his father. "It appears that you've taken a bit of a spill," he sardonically noted with a small, very un-Harry-like smirk, his eyes peculiarly… empty.

"A _spill?"_ Hermione echoed in disbelief, and Ginny nodded her agreement in a very un-concerned manner for someone who had just witnessed someone else 'take a spill.' "Harry, what are you on about? No, I mean, why are we on the _Hogwarts Express?_ What about Voldemort? What… what happened?"

Beside her, Ron made a terribly rude noise rather than his usual squeak at Voldemort's name.

Hermione would have swiveled around to tell him off, and maybe smack him, had she not noticed the completely blank expression on Harry's face as he tilted his head at her in an exceedingly shrewd manner and asked calculatingly, "Volda… what?"

At his words, Hermione swiftly bit back an aggravated 'this is _not _a time for joking around!'

Instead, her mouth snapped shut.

She had been best friends with Harry Potter long enough to find the confusion in his voice, even if he was acting weirdly enough for it to be extremely well-hidden. Any person with even half an intelligence knew that his hatred of Voldemort was as deeply ingrained into him as his own name, so his failure to recognize the Dark Lord's title was by far a more serious cause for alarm in itself...

_Unless he has amnesia,_ her mind reasoned. _But no, that wouldn't explain the train... Or maybe he's been hit by a spell? -_

Sweet Merlin.

_The final battle – Voldemort dead – white light! _her brain frantically remembered in the form of a mental shriek, and Hermione tried to not appear alarmed while she dispelled the mystified expression on her face. White light…. Spell, _she_ had been hit by a spell… But which spell? What in Merlin's name had _happened _to her?

"Head's messed up again," Ron said none-too-quietly to Harry, missing Hermione's eyebrows as they flew up indignantly. "Fall must have made it worse than usual. Merlin, you look awful," he said critically, turning toward her and daintily holding out a handkerchief with his pointer finger and thumb, like he didn't want to come into contact with Hermione's hand if or when she took it. "Come on, pet, clean up before you make a spectacle of yourself and of me – here."

"Oh, come off it, Ronáld," Ginny snapped, suddenly coming to life. "No one can be perfect at every hour of every moment of every day." She paused, tossing her long hair – it was wasn't dirty, Hermione realized abruptly, it was_ highlighted black _– over her shoulder, and gave Ron a haughty expression. "Not even you, brother dearest."

_All right, Ginny and Ron arguing; this is normal._

Hermione worked frenetically to calm her breaths, ignoring the grudgingly offered handkerchief while still desperately trying to make sense of it all. This had to be some strange, surreal mental state she was in, that was it, most likely on account of whatever spell had hit her last.

_Hold on… Did Ginny just call Ron 'Ro__**náld**__?'_

"Yeah, well, a chap can certainly try, can't he, so I'd shut it if I were you, or you won't get him again for a month," Ron – Ronáld? - retorted sharply, scowling at Ginny.

Hermione herself couldn't quite tear her eyes from his slicked back hair, her astonishment so evident one would think his head had turned bright blue. Simultaneously, she attempted to decipher his cryptic comment as Ginny retorted with a tiny snort, "I'll take him as often as I bloody well like, he's mine just as much as he is yours."

By now, on top of everything else, Hermione's curiosity and confusion levels were absolutely overflowing as to whom they were referring and what, exactly, they meant by use of the possessive.

Ron didn't seem to care much about the topic, though, and he turned his attention back toward Hermione. "By the way, pet, I know your only goal in life is to be the Queen of Hogwarts, but buying the Head Girl-ship?" He ran a hand over his practically solid hair, preening, and nodded approvingly. "That was nicely done. I always knew you could figure something out if you really needed to."

'_I always knew you could figure something out if you really needed to'...__What in the__** bloody hell?**_

Instinctively bristling, Hermione angrily opened her mouth to set him straight, but in a flash of gold, she simultaneously noticed that the Head Girl badge was indeed pinned to her robes.

Immediately, a thousand screaming thoughts exploded in her mind.

Not a single one of them made the slightest amount of sense.

Her anger quickly morphing to a subtle fear, she swiftly snapped her mouth shut and looked back up at an expectant Ron. Forcing a smile to her face to ward off the inevitable dialogue, she frantically attempted to decide how to best respond – or, more specifically, what response would be most in-character for this person they were calling 'My.'

They were talking about things she had never done, or at least never remembered doing, and indirectly insulting her intelligence in the process. But maybe… here… she – or someone who had her name and looked like her – had done those things?

"Thanks," she finally said cautiously, her gaze surreptitiously slipping across the compartment to study Harry and Ginny's reaction to her response…

And it took all she had not to choke at the sight of Ginny, right leg draped over Harry's knees, snogging the side of his face as if her very life depended on it. Harry, for his part, was sitting, stone-faced, staring out the window at the bleak landscape blurring by, completely unresponsive to Ginny's actions.

This couldn't be possible. Harry would never,_ever _ignore Ginny, especially not if she was ready to kiss him, by Merlin.

Or not the Harry she knew, anyway.

And… And Ron was doing _nothing _about this? Even if he had finally grudgingly agreed to the Harry-Ginny relationship, he had never allowed anything like this to go on in front of him!

Blinking in shock, her mind whirling frantically and her heat pounding just as hard, Hermione quickly shifted her gaze back to Ron, fully expecting a familiar bellow of brotherly indignation –

His face was about half a wand's length from hers.

She let out a startled yelp and jerked backward in surprise. "Sweet Merlin!" she gasped out, clutching the edge of the seat with one hand and her racing heart with the other. "Don't_ scare _me like that!"

Except for a small, crooked smirk, Ron didn't respond. In fact, he seemed absolutely unconcerned with the downright indecent public displays of affection in which Ginny was participating only three feet away. In an inhumanly quick manner, he had somehow covered the small distance between them in a matter of seconds, and the warm twinkle in his eyes that she was used to seeing had faded completely. In any other situation, Hermione would have trusted those eyes with her life, but now they were currently raking over her figure with what could only be described as a leer.

Uncomfortably, Hermione shifted away from him, her hand instinctively moving behind her to grip the closest thing she could find… a makeup bag.

_Lovely, perfect weapon there._

"Why are you staring at me?" she asked warily, gritting her teeth as she fumbled in her robes for her wand… Oh God, it wasn't where she normally kept it…

"Come now, pet," he breathed in a husky voice she hadn't even imagined he possessed, simply leaning closer the faster that she backed away from him, "am I not allowed to look at something of mine?"

Before Hermione could even say a word in response, his arm was around her, pulling her to him, _crushing_ her to him, his lips sucking the life out of her jaw, her throat, her neck - A spark of pure electricity jolted down her back, and before she realized it, she had sucked in a sharp intake of breath and unconsciously arched her neck into his downward onslaught; his mouth was moving across her skin, lower… lower… _dangerously_ lower –

_Hermione, no! This is not the Ron you like! You might not know how that could be possible yet, but it __**isn't**__ him!_

Her eyes flew open and swiftly widened in disgust as the first sight they were greeted with was a mass of oiled-back hair. Somewhat hysterically, she frantically yanked away from him with every out of energy she possessed, her hand flying of its own accord in the same motion.

_Slap!_

"Will you _stop_ it!" she exclaimed. Gasping in gulps of air, she scooted to the farthest end of the suddenly very tiny compartment, furiously fluffing her hair over her shoulders and out of her face, still digging around in the pockets of her robe with her other hand.

_Ron… __**kissing**__ me?… _

_No, no, this is not happening… _

_What, he finally decides he fancies me when it's a messed-up version of him?_

_My wand… Where is my wand?…_

A bright, angry handprint had appeared on the pale skin of Ron's freckled face, which had steadily begun to turn purple in absolute outrage. "Shit, My, what the bloody hell has gotten into…!"

Abruptly, he trailed off, and if a face could truly light up malevolently, his did. "Wait a minute… " he slowly said to himself.

"What?" Hermione snapped, pausing to stare at him in a huff while swiftly buttoning her white oxford. How had it gotten unbuttoned? Had it been unbuttoned before?

The lanky redhead – so similar, and yet, so, so different – stared at her as if he'd never quite seen her before until that moment. "You're… you're playing hard to get, aren't you, pet?" he said, phrasing it as more of an excited statement than a question.

From the corner of her eye, Hermione saw that even Harry had torn his almost dead eyes from the green scenery and was watching them apathetically, Ginny still halfway on top of him._ Fantastic, an audience,_ she thought sarcastically, but a surge of triumph doused the dismal mood when her fingers finally closed around a familiar stick of wood… stuck down the back of her skirt?

_What on earth…_ How had it not broken?

Briefly closing her eyes, Hermione sighed heavily. "Yes, Ro_náld, _that is exactly what I'm doing," she said flatly. _Well, better than to deny it, anyway._

Ron… Ronáld… let out a feral little growl that would have never exited the mouth of the Ron that Hermione knew, a delighted smirk on his face as if she had just said the most inventive not to mention hottest come-on line ever invented, and he was downright up for the challenge.

_Bugger, not quite the effect I wanted to have, _she thought with a fresh wave of alarm, trying to stay composed while glaring at him for all she was worth. "So keep your hands off me," she snapped, raising her newfound wand toward his eager countenance just in case he didn't catch her point.

_Must keep him at bay, must keep him at bay…_

"Alright, My," Ron said with a deep roll of his eyes and a heavy, self-suffering sigh, "I'll play your little game." He paused and leaned toward her, wagging his finger at her, and another little smirk jumped to his face as he added with none-too-comforting, suggestive undertones, "But not for long."

_Yes, you go ahead and think that._ "Well, we'll certainly see about that," Hermione said sourly, only lowering her wand slightly despite his words of 'reassurance.'

Ron – Ronáld - broke away from her and rolled his eyes back at Harry, twirling his finger around his ear in the universal sign of 'that one's mad, she is.' At the motion, Ginny actually paused in her mouth massage of Harry's face to let out a downright creepy screech of laughter that was enough to remind Hermione of the maniacal Bellatrix Black.

It was too much.

It – all of it – it was all far too much for Hermione's exhausted mentality to bear, and a burst of utter desperation finally broke free and bubbled up into her mind. She had been stretched to her limit from a year and a half of evading Voldemort's forces, searching for ways to destroy him, rallying people to fight… Damn it, she was tired! The insanity had gone on too long, and, just as the end had literally been within her grasp, she had been brought to a place where it was almost worse!

She wanted _her_ Ron back! _Her_ Harry, _her_ Ginny! Not these... these dark versions of them! She was only eighteen years old; what more could the Universe possibly want from her? This couldn't be real, this… this was a nightmare! It was - it was like sitting in a den of Slytherins, even though her robes still said Gryffindor. But it _was _real; there was nothing fake about the lingering sensation of Ron's slobber on her neck in place of the boy she was so exasperatedly fond of, or the way that this Harry's dull eyes were so opposite the fiery, passionate Harry who was her best friend -

_All right, Hermione, stop and breathe.__** Breathe!**__ Let's think logically. Logically is what you're good at. You can do this. Figure out what happened to you, and you might be able to figure out how to reverse it. _

_Now, which spells would create this sort of effect?_

Desperately, she began to run through her old charms and enchantments index in her head. _Illusionary charms… coma states… nightmare hexes… pensive locks…_

Breaking off, it took Hermione nearly everything she had not to turn and bang her head against the nearest solid object. With the way her luck was going, it would most likely end up being Ron – Ronal – _Ronáld._ The list of possibilities was not only vast, it was endless… and that was only if whatever was happening to her was purely mental; if she was trapped somewhere in her mind and nothing more.

But… there were other types of spells, spells that altered reality, spells that were rumored to transfer the enchanted from one universe to another; some worlds were similar and some were practically identical, but others were said to be completely different – quite obviously, this one being one of them, if translating magic was the culprit.

Of course, most of it was passed off as impossible, really, but that didn't mean that it didn't exist.

And, because it was highly likely that the spell had been cast by a Death Eater, that wasn't even _beginning_ to delve into any mechanisms of the Dark Arts that may have been able to do the same thing.

_Oh God… Where am I?_

**A/N: **Fast update; you're in luck!! Thank you so much for all your reviews and support for the first chapter. It's really great to hear back from a lot of you! I will do my best to live up to expectations… hopefully this story will help me do that! What's your first reaction to wherever Hermione's ended up?

Reviews make my day:-)

Cheers all.

LM


	3. Welcome To Hell

**Welcome To Hell**

Monday, August 28, 6:50 P.M.

The remainder of the train ride and subsequent carriage trip up to Hogwarts proved to be enlightening in a way that only created more mysteries rather than solved them.

After her near-assault (courtesy of Ronáld), Hermione felt it wisest to feign sleep for the rest of the journey. The last thing she had noticed before she had 'drifted off' was Harry's forehead as he shoved his hand through his thick mop of hair, at the same time momentarily shoving Ginny off him.

The skin was glaringly smooth. Blank.

Scarless.

Yes, Hermione without a doubt had needed to draw herself out the of the dialogue and mentally rejuvenate.

In the conversations between Harry, Ginny, and Ronáld that followed, however, she was able to glean snippets of random information that would probably make more sense to her once she could read up on the general history of whatever universe or mentality she was trapped in.

First, Harry was Head Boy to Hermione's Head Girl, and while she – or this 'My' version of herself – had apparently 'bought' her way into the position, however that worked, Harry had actually had the grades to be appointed to it. Ronáld had also referred to Harry as 'Evans' several times, leaving her to conclude that it, and not Potter, must have been his last name here. Hermione - or, rather, My had also spent some or all of the summer with Harry, or so she assumed from the very brief passage between the two boys shortly after she had (mentally) arrived.

"_Seems you've been burned yet again, O Beloved Brother," Ginny said in a sickly-sweet voice, incredibly pausing in her very one-sided lovefest with Harry. Hermione heard a slight rustle, as if the black-and-red-head had gestured with her hand. "Either My really is sleeping, or she's avoiding you __**by**__ sleeping. Clearly, you aren't__** ravishing**__ enough for someone like her anymore."_

"_Actually, Ginny, I believe the term's 'hard to get.' " Ronáld countered sneeringly, twisting out his sister's name as if it were a dirty word. "Probably got the idea out of one of her Fashion Vogue things. If you were a man, you'd find it rather hot; maybe you should try it out on Evans here. He obviously isn't enjoying your efforts to __**throw**__ yourself on him."_

_Hermione found it rather odd that Ronáld had enough control over the conversation to make a reference to Harry as if Harry wasn't even in the compartment. _

_Meanwhile, Ginny childishly stomped her foot on the floor. "Call me by that horrid name again, you prattish berk, and I'll tell Father! He'll see to it that I'll get our little House-Wizard for far longer than you will!" Ginny – or whatever she wanted to be called – snapped frostily, ignoring her brother's latter comment. Hermione was again left at a loss as to the meaning of their occasional, odd possessive references as Ginny continued disgustedly, "That name sounds so… __**plebian.**__ 'Ginevra' is much more sophisticated. Don't you agree, Harry?" she added in a breathy voice._

_The compartment filled with silence instead of an answer. After a moment, however, the silence was broken by Ronáld's none-too-discreet snort. "What did big brother tell you, eh? My might be daft in everything else she does, but she bloody well knows how to trap a bloke in her spell." If they hadn't been closed, Hermione would have rolled her eyes at the ounce of smug pride in his voice. " 'Hard to get,' Gi__**nev**__ra. Remember that –"_

"_I CAN'T FIGHT THIS WORLD, I HATE IT, I HATE EVERYONE –"_

_Out of nowhere, muffled, screaming music and heavy bass suddenly erupted throughout the compartment. It was only by a minor miracle that Hermione managed to remain relatively limp, though she flinched slightly at the loud noise and dug her fingers into the plush pillow beneath her head. _

"_Effing Merlin, Ronáld, can't you turn that bloody thing down?" Ginn – er, Ginevra snapped angrily. _

"_Of course I can't turn it down, you cow, it might be important. Now shut it, will you?" The angry music increased in volume and clarity, as if whatever contraption was behind it had been uncovered. "Bloody hell, it's father again. Give him the latest mobile model and he can't get enough of the bloody thing - What do you want?" he snapped as the music abruptly, thankfully stopped playing._

_A hollow, garbled but unintelligible answer could be heard in the ringing silence that followed._

_The entire situation suddenly became so utterly preposterous in her mind that Hermione almost burst out laughing. So absurd was everything that had happened to her since she had somehow left the site of the final battle that this latest revelation didn't even shock her. _

" – _**Yes,**__ father, I get it, all right? Don't ring me again. I'm going into the Great Hall now; you know mobile service is right shitty in here…"_

_Not only was he lying through his teeth, Ronáld Weasley was using a Muggle cell phone. And, what was even more, both he and his father apparently seemed to know _**_how_**_ to use it. _

"_Yeah, the train got in early… Right. I'll tell her. Bye."_

_**Oh, this day just keeps getting better and better.**_

_It was, however, somewhat strange that it, as a Muggle contraption, would be allowed at Hogwarts - _

_Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something snapping shut. _

"_Anyway. Evans," Ron continued shortly, sounding only slightly put-out. "My wasn't acting kooky like this when you two were at the manor. While it's all sexy and lovely now, I don't fancy putting up with it for long. Has she been going about all mad-like for a while?"_

_As the conversation paused, Hermione held her breath, her grip around her wand, tucked beneath her robes, instinctively tightening. _

"_Somewhat," Harry finally replied curtly, the word more grunted than spoken. _

_Though Hermione had no idea why My would have been around Harry long enough 'that summer' for him to have been able to produce that answer, she silently released the trapped air in both relief and surprise, briefly sending up a prayer of thanks to whichever gods were looking down on her. Somehow, she had an instinctive sense that it was urgent she didn't give away the fact that bimbo-istic My had been taken over by a considerably more intelligent self. At this point, she was relying more on intuition than familiar faces and assumed information, and she wasn't willing to give up her cover just yet._

_Well, score one for her on the My Imitation Meter, anyway…_

_Harry had not spoken another word for the rest of the trip._

Hermione's second most earth-shattering observation occurred at the end of the train trip. The exit from their particular compartment just happened to have a decorative mirror inset beside the door instead of a window to the hallway, apparently both a convenience and form of privacy for the Head Boy and Girl. And it was courtesy of this mirror that Hermione first saw My.

_Initially, she thought it was a window to the next train compartment until the girl in said train compartment started imitating her movements motion-for-motion, and then froze at the exact same time Hermione did, staring, wide-eyed, at the image…_

_The Head Girl had to reign in a horrified shriek before she gave herself away. Her 'free-spirited hair,' as she had fondly referred to its bushy-ness, was now layered, curled at the ends but frizz-free to near perfection, and highlighted blonde, her uniform was so form-fitting that it had to be illegal, her face was covered in makeup applied to such perfection it was neither too much nor too little, and her normally fair skin was tanned to a shade of brown that she would have probably never been able to accomplish without magical intervention._

_**Holy God.**_

_She hardly would have recognized herself if she hadn't known that it was herself she was looking at, and if Ronáld hadn't let out an impatient sigh, said as if addressing a five-year-old, "Now, now, the world knows you're the fairest of them all, pet; let's get a move on," and shoved her none-too-gently toward the doorway, Hermione probably would have forgotten herself completely and screamed for all she was worth._

_**Sweet Merlin, that... that is **_**not**_** me!**_

From that moment onward, the world jumped from being 'downright creepy' to 'absolutely _terrifying.'_ Just how in Merlin's name was she supposed to pretend to be this 'My' person for… for… for God knew how long? When was the last time she even _attempted_ to apply makeup? One and a half… two years? Bill and Fleur's wedding, that was it…

It wasn't as if she couldn't do it, she had just never had the patience for it. Quite frankly, she was more concerned about what her grades looked like than what her hair did, end of story. But if she stopped now – or, rather, if the person that everyone in this world knew as My stopped making herself up – Hermione guessed that it would most likely be a dead giveaway that something was seriously off.

She felt disturbingly like a spy in the midst of an enemy camp during a war, even though it hardly seemed like wartime here, wherever she was, and no one seemed to be after her. Simply _being_ around Harry, Ronáld, and Ginevra was stressful enough, trying to say just enough without revealing too much nor too little, dodging Harry's little blank but calculating stares the moment she said a word with more than six letters in it.

No, something… many, _many_ somethings about this world had dark, dangerous undertones to them, even in every underclassmen she had passed walking to the carriages in a downpour of rain that eerily reminded her of the final battle.

The conversations had all the energy of companions reunited after the long summer months, to be sure, but they weren't bubbly and bright. Instead, they were filled with dark arts references and jokes that Hermione found more cruel than funny. Every breath she took was another cautious step across a land-mine encrusted field. Good Lord, she had to at least _know_ what she was dealing with; how people expected My to act –

And Hermione snapped.

The second that Ronáld let out a hoot of greeting and sauntered over to a Neville Longbottom who was about fifty pounds lighter than her world's version of him and a whole lot more built, Hermione caught the sleeve of her dark-haired best friend's apathetic double and held him back. "Harry," she whispered in a low voice.

Harry stopped abruptly and silently looked down at her with Ginny… evra clinging to his side like static electricity. She was so preoccupied with Harry that Hermione doubted she would be a hindrance.

Without pause, without giving herself the opportunity to lose her nerve, the newly proclaimed Head Girl broke out the eight-week drama classes she'd taken during the summer after fourth year… which she had subsequently put to great use, both in her world and this one.

Closing her eyes and wrapping her left arm around her stomach, Hermione pressed the back of her right hand to her forehead and half-moaned, "Oh… Oh _dear,_ Harry, I feel simply _awful."_ Swaying a bit for effect, she opened her eyes and stared at him desperately. "I just _can't_ sit out in front of everyone like this. It'll completely sod my image!"

For the first time in what had probably been at least two hours, Harry spoke, his deep voice still as flat as it had briefly been on the train. "So where are you going to hide, then, My, hmm? You abhor the Hospital Wing, and Headmistress McGonagall hasn't given us the Head passwords yet. You might be drop-dead gorgeous, but charming a portrait to let you in without the magic words is a skill you just don't have."

Hermione flinched at the sound of such sarcasm exiting a mouth that was usually so compassionate. The strength of the scathing remark, interlaced with a virtually nonexistent compliment, took her aback, especially if they were supposed to be 'friends.'

Another panicked thought suddenly struck her.

_Maybe, here, Harry and I aren't friends at all!_

But Harry was like her second, her rock! Between him and Ron, Harry had always been there, so how could she get used to that not being so?

Still, the Hermione of this world would probably care less about it, right?

_An airhead, Hermione! Think airhead!_

"Oh, I'm sure I'll find someone to get me somewhere," she replied airily with a feigned, pained smile and a blasé wave of her hand, slipping the fact that McGonagall was Headmistress into the mental file she had finally labeled 'Universe B.'

"Well, then." Harry's dreary gaze shifted toward the back of Ronáld's red head as he swept out of the foyer with about eight other Gryffindor boys. After a moment, he glanced back at down at her with narrowed eyes. "I suppose this means I have to cover for you, then, don't I?"

Instantly, Hermione recognized to what he was referring and was doubly happy she'd decided to opt out of the Sorting and Opening Feast: Leading around first years with loads of curious questions to which she probably had no answer was not an experience she cared to fudge her way through.

Widening her eyes, she purposely reached up, curled a lock of hair around her finger, and twisted it about in feigned puzzlement while Ginn- Ginevra visibly yawned in boredom and rudely began pulling Harry away from Hermione and toward the open Great Hall doors. "Cover?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, My, _cover."_An ounce of actual irritation leaked into Harry's otherwise toneless, icy voice as he attempted to untangle himself from Ginevra's hand. "As in, taking the first years to their common rooms? Explaining protocol? All the Head Girl responsibilities that you, as Gryffindor's resident moronic tart and absolutely last candidate for Head Girl, have absolutely no knowledge of?"

Hermione bristled, grinding her jaw to keep herself from snapping his head off at the blatant barb. Who was this callous wanker into whom her beloved Harry had morphed? It was enough to break her heart, but she didn't have the time to mourn. Instead, she rationally prepared an appropriate comeback that wouldn't be too far over My's head.

"Oh, well, best you did it, then, isn't it?" she told him sweetly with a loud and very forced giggle. She patted his tense shoulder amicably before twirling around and prancing off down a foyer exit with one last wave of her hand at his now-scowling face. "Ta, Harry!"

_I cannot believe I just did that. _Now he probably thought she was just skipping out, but, then again, he hadn't looked too surprised about it, either._ Good, probably something My would do._

Making it to an empty hallway, Hermione didn't dare look back, nor did she need to consult a portrait or statue for directions as she started to sprint for the library. Very quickly, however, she discovered that she would be sprinting nowhere in the skirt that she had no other option but to wear at the moment.

_CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK…_

Good Merlin… Could any pair of shoes alive be as noisy as My Granger's?

Pulling her wand from its rightful place up her sleeve, she deftly flicked it at her feet and sighed in relief as four inch heels transformed into comfortable – and much more quiet - flats. As for the reaction of others, Hermione didn't care. She wasn't planning on running into anyone else that night.

The library, thank God, was just as she remembered it: Musty, dim with just enough light, the smell of much-loved leather in the air.

Hermione slipped into a back entrance with which she was rather familiar, near the Restricted Section, and glanced around discreetly, though she doubted even Madam Pince or whoever this universe's librarian was would be there. She had a vague idea of what she was looking for, and only hoped that it wasn't in a different section of the library in this vastly different world.

Moving in silence so quiet it was nearly deafening, Hermione absently cut through the Restricted Section, but absentmindedness swiftly turned to horrified astonishment as she faced what must have been her hundredth shock of the night:

Rather than the typically forbidden volumes about the Dark Arts, the Restricted Section held books on light arts culture, beliefs, and values, as well as – most terrifyingly - Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Hermione swallowed a wave of nausea at this morbid observation and forced herself to continue on… until familiar words froze her feet to the ground in paralysis. _Sweet Merlin._

Slowly, she reached out in a dazed horror to lightly touch the dusty, cracked spine of her standard sixth year Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook, jerking back just as quickly when several spiders scuttled out and spilled across the bindings. The book – well, all of them, really - looked as if they hadn't been moved in decades.

_Dear God, what kind of world __**is**__ this? _

Numbly stumbling a step backward, Hermione finally blinked rapidly and vigorously shook her head. _Come__** on,**__ you're never going to survive here if you lose your head! If this really is a new world, you have got to find out as much as you possibly can as soon as possible!_

Gripping her purse-like, designer book bag that was so lacking in practicality that Hermione doubted it could support more than one text, she turned and quickly continued on her way, passing an enormous section labeled **Dark Arts **that encompassed what would have been, in her world, Defense Against the Dark Arts _and_ Charms.

It was becoming scarily apparent what Universe B's Hogwarts valued most, though she was extremely surprised to find a rather large section on Muggle Studies.

Finally, she nearly collapsed in relief into the **History of Magic **section, right where it should be, tucked away in the northwest corner of the library. Whether in her universe or this one, Hermione noted somewhat fondly that it still looked like it hadn't been visited in ages.

Perfect for someone who temporarily wanted to disappear.

In annoyance, she impatiently brushed a wave of hair out of her eyes. Hr new hairstyle included long bangs swept to one side, and they, along with high-heeled shoes, were quickly becoming the bane of her existence. Nimbly, she scanned the bookshelves, finding titles both familiar and sinister.

The Goblin Revolutions, 1301-1352._ Nope, too early._

Her eyes moved forward to the shelves labeled_ 20th Century Relevant._

Foundation of an Empire, WWII On._ Muggle books in the magical section?_

Our Sovereign, an Autobiography._ Sovereign? Wha – Was there no longer a Ministry here? Did Voldemort win? Is that what this is? But then why are Ron and Harry walking about as if they rule the world? No, it's probably talking about Grindelwald. But he was never referred to as 'Sovereign,' was he? Interesting…_

Hogwarts, A History._ Ah, my love, we meet again!_

Hermione was strongly tempted to pull this one out, but stopped short when she noticed A Brief History of the Modern Wizarding World. Setting down her book bag, she lifted the latter from its place, which sent a cloud of dust from the surrounding books belching upward in the process.

She carefully studied the cover. A Brief History of the Modern Wizarding World, 1945- 1997 looked far newer than any of its counterparts, and since it covered everything up to 1997, which was only the previous year, it sounded like it would be exactly what she needed.

All Hermione had decided for certain thus far was that she was clearly stuck in some sort of sick, messed-up world, but she would feel considerably better, relatively speaking, if that was at least confirmed in writing.

Warily glancing around, Hermione picked up her book bag again and moved around to a small alcove off the bay windows overlooking what would have been the lake, but now only reflected utter blackness in the transparent glass.

Squeezing into the small, lighted niche, known only to booklovers who wanted some serious privacy, she sighed and opened the dusty cover. The table of contents was filled with titles of historical events she didn't recognize – at least, things that hadn't happened in her universe, Universe A. She stared down at it, uncertainly wondering where a relevant starting place would be.

Finally, she dug her fingers between the pages near the middle of the book and just flipped the entire thing open to a random page, sweeping her bangs out of the way so she could read.

She was grateful she was sitting down after only one paragraph.

**7:54 P.M.**

For the first time in an hour, Hermione took a breather and heavily leaned her head against the stone wall at her back. It connected with a small _thunk,_but she was so numb that she hardly felt it. By now, her astonishment and horror had faded to a dull, resigned acceptance that she was going to have to make the best of the hell-like world she was suddenly stuck in.

It was a world in which the twinkling-eyed Albus Dumbledore had ruled as 'Sovereign' ever since he defeated a man named Gellert Grindelwald… Grindelwald, who, along with his father before him, had overseen a peaceful United Kingdom for decades beforehand… Grindelwald, who, here, had been the so-called 'good guy,' though the book certainly didn't portray him that way. In the narration, Dumbledore had taken power in the name of "progress," proposing that, wrapped in his conventional ways, Grindelwald was holding the magical world back from achieving true greatness.

From what part of the world she had seen thus far, Hermione distantly supposed that, according to this Dumbledore, achieving true greatness was intimately involved with practicing the Dark Arts.

It was also a world in which Tom Riddle, better known to her as Voldemort, had become the leader of what was referred to in the Sovereign State as 'Conservative insurgents' during the late seventies and early eighties. Though not directly stated in the book, Hermione got the impression that these 'Conservative insurgents' also favored the Light Arts. The uprising turned out to be a surprisingly powerful force, but it was nonetheless quelled when several of its leaders, Tom Riddle and a certain Lucius Malfoy included, 'mysteriously vanished.' No stand-off between Riddle and Harry Evans/Potter seemed to have occurred, though, further explaining why Harry didn't have the famous scar of Universe A.

After this, according to A Brief History, Dumbledore had only mildly oppressed those families which had supported the side of the Conservative insurgents: the pureblooded traditional families like the Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges, and Parkinsons had been stripped of most if not all of their wealth, land, titles, and reputations until they were 'poor' by most Wizarding standards, and businesses were given legal right to turn known Conservative supporters away from their doors, etc. In this way, the Sovereignty had continued to control these followers of the Light Arts until what would have been the end of her fourth year.

That was when everything changed.

Riddle escaped from Azkaban, apparently where he had 'mysteriously vanished' to, and Conservative insurgents began to spring up all over the Sovereign State. After fifth year ended, Hogwarts school was placed on hold so all hands would be available in what had become a full-out war.

Apparently, however, at the end of Hermione's sixth year in Universe A, Sovereign Dumbledore, his Viceroys (Arthur Weasley and, surprisingly, Lily Evans), and the Order of the Phoenix had jointly defeated forces led by Bellatrix Black, Tom Riddle, and his young protégé, Draco Malfoy, in Universe B.

Well, actually, Riddle had simply 'vanished' as soon as the war had ended, again. Not 'mysteriously vanished,' though, which perhaps meant that he might not have been in Azkaban...

It was completely flipped, Hermione thought in shock, bowing her head and curling her knees to her chest in as tight a ball as she possibly could. In this world, good was bad and bad was good, and the good had lost. Hermione supposed it would have been as horrible for them as losing to Voldemort, in her world.

Still, her mind was throbbing with pure disbelief at associating any of those names – Malfoy, Riddle, Lestrange, and, for God's sake, _Lucius _and _Draco?__­_ - with 'Light,' just as much as she was having a hard time imagining the Order of the Phoenix as evil, and… it had said 'Lily Evans,' which meant that Harry finally had at least one of his parents back!

But, then again, that wouldn't do him much good if she were just as evil as Hermione was getting the impression that Dumbledore was.

Slowly, she lifted her head again, taking several deep breaths before she kept reading. According to the book, the delay of the educational system due to the war meant that a year of school had to be made up, which would explain why she was attending school now when she – all of them, most likely – would be eighteen.

In a way, Hermione supposed that she should be relieved she was on the winning side, apparently, but could she really pretend to be some brainless, materialistic girl who supported the Dark Arts for as long as she was trapped here? Hopefully with a little research, she'd be able to figure out how to get herself back, but… what if it was irreversible?

The walls of her mind began to close at a scarily fast pace while her breathing became shallow and ragged, and she struggled to slow her pounding heartbeat. _What if I'm here… permanently? _

Instantly, spots of black began to dot her vision; she couldn't breathe; she couldn't… couldn't…

Suddenly, the common sense center of her brain reined in her careening thoughts before hyperventilation could set in, shoving outward until her vision became clear again. _Oh good Merlin, Hermione, this is why you think logically rather than use your imagination. 'What ifs' will get you nowhere. Keep reading until you're fairly confident, and then figure out a plan. _

'_**A plan?' **_some part of her echoed dryly.

_Well… __**something!**__ Come on, you've fought in a war! This isn't even that! This should be __**easy **__compared to that!_

_**Right, easy. **_

Sighing heavily, Hermione admitted the truth of the statement and allowed her eyes to flicker back down, flipping though the remainder of the pages. Most of them were filled with an immense, multi-paged… list?

Frowning, she leaned closer, narrowing her eyes to make out the tiny print in the dim light. It appeared to be a clearly marked and evidently very thorough register of those who had once been Conservative insurgents, except here the label at the top of the page was 'House-Wizards and Witches.'

Hermione stared blankly at the title for a good half-minute. _What on earth? _Of course, there were House-Elves, to be sure, but there had never been any record of witches and wizards being used like….

Swiftly, her stomach lurched, and she nearly vomited as the realization hit her all at once.

… being used like House-Elves. Like servants. Like _slaves._

_An easy way for Dumbledore to end the threat of rebellion for good,_ she realized with a shudder, horror flooding her every nerve. In a sort of morbid fascination, she was drawn to it, running over the names in a fresh wave of numbed repulsion, names that had, all her life, been the darkest of the dark – Lestrange, Avery, Crabbe, Goyle, Flint, Montague, Black, Nott, McNair…

The index was arranged by location rather than alphabetized - more than two pages, filled with names and numbers, were devoted to a place called The Phoenix, but Hermione's eyes couldn't help but be drawn to a bolded **Hogwarts.** Under it were several names she vaguely recognized, along with many she didn't at all.

Her revolted gaze traveled downward.

At the bottom of the **Hogwarts** section was a separate list –**Personal House-Wizards to Students.** On this list, there were only five names; five lines. Apparently, only that many students were wealthy enough to afford their own, personal _House-Wizard,_ Hermione thought in disgust, ready to slam the book shut and dive headfirst into the Dark Arts Translation Spells and Enchantments section of the library, ready to find some way to _get the bloody hell back to her world…_

But her breath froze on her lips the moment her eyes skimmed the fourth line of tiny print. The first three names, she didn't recognized.

This one, she did.

'_A015, formerly Malfoy, Draco. Personal House-Wizard to Lord Ronáld and Lady Ginevra Weasley. 40,000 g.'_

An image of the pompous blond as she had remembered him the last she saw him, his face permanently set into a sneer, instantly flashed into Hermione's mind; she could even remember the haughty remark that came along with it: '_What are you looking at, you stupid Mudblood?' _

Sure, Malfoy had been annoying, immature, and occasionally cruel, but no one – no House-Elf, no human, _no one - _deserved to have their natural rights taken away from them. Somehow, though, Hermione doubted a S.P.E.W.-type lobbying movement for human welfare would be very acceptable here.

_And __**'Lord**__ Ronáld?' '__**Lady**__ Ginevra?' _When had that happened, unless Mr. Weasley becoming one of Dumbledore's right hand Viceroys had also granted the Weasley family titles from the Sovereign himself. Definitely a strong possibility, Hermione mused. Looking at it from a purely objective viewpoint, she found it odd that Ron, not Harry, would have chosen Draco, but this world was turning out, again, to be vastly different for the one she knew.

After a moment, her eyes, once again, were drawn back to the page as she read the last name under **Hogwarts.**

'_B128, formerly Parkinson, Pansy. Personal House-Witch to Lady My G. Evans. 10,500 g.'_

Hmm, so Harry had a sister.Well, obviously, if his parents survived, there was no reason why they couldn't have more children -

_Ohhh - wait._ A dangerous twinge of familiarity surged through her, and Hermione's mind suddenly lurched violently into rewind, going back ten, twenty minutes… an hour…

"_**Yes, My,**__** cover."**_

"_**My? Are you all there, pet? My-y…"**_

Lady My G. Evans.

My G.

Hermione _Granger._

_Oh my God._

**A/N: **Another fast update!! They for sure won't all be this fast, but I thought I'd give you something to fill all your free time on the weekend, haha. Again, thank you so much for your comments and reviews! I always very much like hearing what you think of the chapters and the sort of new reality I'm creating in the story. Oh, and for those of you who've been asking, Draco will be in the next chapter. It'll also be a bit intense. So be prepared.

Also, for those of you who might have any questions about this: I have published a few chapters of this story, minus a handful of changes, on Fan fic . net before while under a different penname, so if it looks very, very familiar to you, this is why. Hope that clears things up!

Reviews make my day:-)

Cheers all.

LM


	4. Unexpected Encounters

**A/N:**Just as a warning, a part of this chapter is quite graphic. So you expect it ahead of time.

**Unexpected Encounters**

Monday, August 28, 8:12 P.M.

She was a slave – pardon, _House-Witch - _owner. This thought alone would have been enough to disgust Hermione to the point of illness, but not only that… she was Harry Potter's sister, or Harry Evans' sister, as it appeared to be in this universe.

She ran through several scenarios in her mind, and the only one that made the most sense, particularly because she was quite obviously Ron's girlfriend and Ginevra was quite obviously Harry's, was the one in which she had, in the course of her acquaintanceship with Harry, been adopted by his very much alive mother and possibly father, which also meant that, in the course of her acquaintanceship with Harry…

Something must have happened to her parents.

Suddenly, everyone to whom Hermione would normally go in order to enlist help for her less-than-peachy situation seemed wholly untrustworthy, and there was no earthly way she was going to seek out the Dumbledore of this world as if he was the respected, wise old man from hers.

_Oh God. What a sodding mess. _

She didn't know how long she simply sat in an attempt to try to absorb/accept the wave of nearly overwhelming new information, especially since her head still had the lingering effects of a migraine that hadn't entirely vanished since she'd entered the new reality.

Finally, she took a heavy breath. She knew what she had to do, and by Merlin, when Hermione Granger was determined to see something through to the end, it would certainly be done.

And Hermione made a solemn vow.

She _would_ get home again. No matter what to what lengths it might take, she was going to find a way back to the world she loved in which evil had already been defeated, which meant that, no matter to what lengths it might take… she was going to survive in this world without a hitch until the moment she managed to find that way back.

Doing her own makeup every morning? Straightening her hair? Keeping her hand down and her mouth shut during classes and acting like Lavender Brown for an extended period of time? _Not a problem,_ Hermione decided – or, at least, not if it would dispel any suspicion from herself while she religiously staked out the library until she found a counterspell to whatever spell had landed her in Universe B.

It was an undercover approach that she had never considered trying before - at least, not during the war she had already fought. Then again, pretty much everyone in that world would have been able to call her out for Harry Potter's brilliant best friend. Here, she was in a completely different situation, and if everyone else thought she was nothing more than another pretty face and empty head, it could definitely work to her advantage.

Which was why she was now discreetly trailing her way, under the cover of a Disillusionment charm, back to the Head common room along a vaguely familiar and lesser used corridor on the outskirts of the castle, lit wand held in an upright position as she poured over a copy of one of the more recent Hogwarts yearbooks. It was from what would have been her fifth year in Universe B.

Quickly, with a form of curiosity akin to dread churning in the pit of her stomach, she opened to the first - and uncharacteristically large – section of the yearbook.

Red and gold blasted off the pages, the colors clashing painfully with her gaze in a way that had never bothered her before. They belonged to Gryffindor, quite obviously, and, almost instantly, she found at least four photos of herself – Well, not _herself,_ per say, but of My, Ronáld, Harry, and Ginevra.

She frowned as she peered at the first one - it was solely of Ginevra and herself, Ginevra's hair still streaked black and My's hair still scarily blonde and straight in a way that Hermione herself had only managed to get it once, at the Yule Ball. The two were posing amidst many onlookers (most of them male) as if the center aisle in the Great Hall had turned into a Parisian runway, uniform robes slung partially off their shoulders. What was truly terrifying was that they seemed to be easily pulling the look off.

_Oh my God, not at all looking forward to the next few days, _Hermione thought bleakly, taking notes about My's apparently loose behavior nonetheless. Without a doubt, looking at an image of her well-dressed look-alike doing things that Hermione had never done was downright creepy, as if the Hermione of this Universe had not only been her twin, but her _evil_ twin.

Swallowing her disgust, she tore her eyes away from the suddenly disturbing yearbook pictures long enough to sidestep a particularly large and particularly disturbing statue of an ogre that she hadn't remembered in this area of the castle in Universe A. To her mild relief, the positively deserted halls were a welcome testament that the Welcome Feast was still in full swing.

Quickly turning her attention back to the yearbook – her new form of 'research' - she flipped the page to another image, this one featuring Ronáld-with-the-slicked-back-hair, Harry, and herself. Harry was staring at the camera as if he was trying to break it, Ronáld was too busy planting kisses along My's exposed neck to look at said camera, and My was blowing a kiss toward the viewer, giggling, and giving a saucy wink.

_Sweet Merlin, please, __**please**__ tell me I will never be put in another position where I will have to pose like that!_

Could they even put pictures like that in yearbooks?

In any case, here her name was still listed as **My Granger**, so whatever had happened between herself and the Potter family had to have happened quite recently, as well as whatever reason Harry had for talking to her as if he hated her more than he did Dementors –

"Ahoy there, Filch! 'ow many more yeh got there?"

_Oh shit._

Hermione leapt into the shadows of the nearest wall at the dangerously close, deeply masculine yell, wand in her hand and spell in her mouth until she remembered that she still was under Disillusionment. Letting out a breath, she sagged in relief, but tensed up again as a few self-suffering mutterings sounded. Her eyes narrowing in curiosity, she cautiously leaned back out into the hall once more as someone else replied, "Erm… this 'uns the last one."

As if someone very large was walking about, a large, rhythmical thumping sounded and then stopped up ahead, the noise most likely emerging from what Hermione knew to be a small courtyard that led out onto the grounds. "And which one'a the vermin do we got 'ere, eh?"

Hermione sucked in a surprised breath at the unmistakable voice of Hagrid… except that it sounded much more like a growl than a his typical grunt-like speech. Instantly, she leaned back into the darkness, muttering another Disillusionment for good measure.

Hagrid had been good in her world, which, unluckily for her, meant that here he was almost certainly bad.

Meanwhile, there was a distinct but faint sound of something – cloth, maybe? – rustling. A second later rang out perhaps the most terrifying noise Hermione had heard that entire day: the sound of Hagrid suppressing chuckles of pure, dark malevolence. "Well, well, well. Look 'oo it is."

A thick silence greeted this comment. It was swiftly broken as a sharp _crack!_ rang out. Hermione leapt in surprise as the sound as Hagrid's evil-sounding double said in an eerily amused voice, "That's right, that'll teach yeh ter address yer superiors, ya good-for-nothing whelp. Eh, Filch, c'mere."

Dear God, whatever they were taunting was a_ person? _Hermione thought, horrified. She had been under the impression it was some kind of animal for Care of Magical Creatures!

Slowly, she began to inch closer to the courtyard. Of course, the wisest thing for her to do would have probably been to turn around immediately and go back the way she'd come, but a mixture of curiosity and, now, repulsion at whatever was being done to whoever was in the courtyard kept her in place. Anyway, she hadn't run around undetected after hours, in teachers' offices, or while avoiding Death Eaters for seven years for nothing.

"Don't suppose His Lordship'll mind if we teach 'em a lit'le lesson," Hagrid's distinct voice continued.

Filch, oddly enough, sounded very much the same as her universe's version of him – just creepy, plain and simple, as he chuckled out, "Sure looks like His Lordship's already taught him a few lessons 'imself, don't it?"

"Couldn't agree wit yeh more," Hagrid noted smugly. Hermione frowned and tucked the bulky yearbook under her left arm, gripping her wand in her right as she slunk down the last few meters of the hall that remained before it emptied into the courtyard. "But, as the Headmistress says, it don't hurt to give these types another extra taste. Ain't that right, snake boy?"

Silence greeted his question, and Hermione involuntarily winced at the abrupt sound of metal violently striking metal. "Codswallop, yeh filthy animal, you'll answer me when I speak ter ya!"

_Sweet Merlin, __**how**__ can this be Hagrid? _

Her heart twisted painfully, longing more than ever for the home she'd only been away from for less than a day, but she quickly forced the homesickness to the side. _No time for that now. Get through one second at a time. You're going to get yourself home eventually, I promise. _

Determinedly, she clenched her jaw and continued forward as the light of the hallway faded into the darkness of the night. Drawing up alongside the very edge of the wall bordering the courtyard, she took a breath, trying to decide what exactly she was going to do now that she was where she wanted to be. She dearly wished she had a pair of Fred and George's Extendible Ears as a low, muffled response to Hagrid's demand finally came, but she assumed that it wasn't the response Hagrid had been looking for, because, without even a breath's notice, he'd shouted in a voice laced with such uncharacteristic anger, "_Crucio!"_

The word slammed into Hermione's ears like a sledgehammer, and her blood went cold at the sound of a sharp but muffled intake of breath – but, incredibly, not a scream.

Hermione had never heard anyone withstand the Crutiatus Curse without a sound.

At first, she thought, in relief, that whoever it was had passed out, but a jerky rattling of what could have been chains and the very occasional soft, choking intake of breath, hardly audible over the raucous laughter of Hagrid and Filch, told Hermione that he or she hadn't. They were conscious. And they were being tortured.

_Oh, forget my stupid cover! I can't let this go on anymore!_

Taking a quick breath to steel her nerves, Hermione flung her head and wand arm around the edge of the wall with no debate whatsoever about which spell to use. Taking quick but critical aim at the first thing she saw- the towering, instantly recognizable bulk of Hagrid – she vehemently hissed, _"Oppugno avis!" _

Instantly, at least four dozen small, yellow birds exploded from her wand and shot, screeching, toward the two men like brightly colored missiles locked onto a target. Any curses that may have emerged from Hagrid and Filch's mouths were drowned out by the horrible racket, and, in less than three seconds, both men were positively swallowed up by the cloud of canaries.

Quickly doing a hall check to ensure that the sudden noises hadn't drawn any extra company, Hermione held the birds on who she assumed to be the groundskeepers/castle guards for a good half minute. Once yellow feathers actually began flying through the air around the melee, she pointedly flicked her wand and sent all 48 of the things swarming out onto the grounds, tauntingly holding them in rather close visual distance.

"Birds're a bloody menace!" Hagrid grunted furiously, red-faced and wheezing. She had loved Hagrid enough in her world to completely ignore the fact that he wasn't the most intelligent chip on the block, but here, where this was not the Hagrid she knew, where he was a stranger to her and nothing more, she was relying on that fact to buy her some time…

Hermione sagged in relief as she heard the half-giant call off the Crutiatus Curse. She peered into the courtyard in time to see Filch stumble to his feet, his once-brown coat now splattered with white splotches and an innumerable amount of feathers. In any other situation, the scene would have been absolutely hilarious, but now was by far the last she could imagine proper for joking around. Her eyes, instead, were quickly drawn to the edge of what appeared to be a cage hidden behind Hagrid, but her view of it was lost as Filch flung a large, dirty sheet over it and spluttered, "Sodding, bloody, _buggering_ bollocks–"

Cutting off Filch's wave of profanities, Hagrid easily grabbed the much smaller man by the collar and stabbed his finger out toward the Forbidden Forest. "Go down'a your hut an' bring me som'a that bird killer potion, or whatever you got down there that'll work for som'min like this." He shoved Filch toward the courtyard's small, arched entrance to the grounds, simultaneously brandishing a wand, and shouted after him, "I'll trail 'em 'til yeh get back!"

The ground actually shook as Hagrid crashed out of the arch.

_Hagrid… __**Wand… WHAT?**_

Hermione's frantically racing thoughts quickly informed her that, if she remembered correctly, Hagrid wasn't allowed to perform extensive magic, _especially_ not an Unforgivable. At the same time, though, common sense told her that, with events as messed up as they were in Universe B, Tom Riddle would have been more likely to have been expelled from Hogwarts than Hagrid had the two gotten in a confrontation.

Warily, she glanced around once more before she cautiously jogged out into the cool night, her path lit by several lit torches inset in the stone castle walls around what was apparently Hogwarts' unloading station. Aside from a few stone benches and a small, drained fountain that looked like it hadn't been used in years, the grassy courtyard was empty save the waist tall, rectangular-shaped object that Filch had covered up.

Except for some distant bellows from Hagrid and the faint sound of buzzing late-summer insects, the night was completely quiet. The silence was eerie, really, especially if there was something – someone – alive under the dark, ripped cloth. In all honesty, Hermione wasn't quite sure _what_ she might find inside what she was fairly certain was a cage.

Gingerly, she reached down and tentatively grasped the edge of the rough material. Absently shaking her bangs out of her face, she began to pull it off, but quickly hesitated –

_Oh, come __**on,**__ Hermione! You've seen just about everything there is to be seen!_

The thought wasn't exactly comforting, but, clenching her jaw and the yearbook for good measure, Hermione narrowed her eyes and flipped back the dark cover –

Automatically, her hand jumped to cover her mouth, aghast. She sucked in an appalled breath, and, enclosed within the long, thick bars of what was definitely a cage, was something that instantly started violently in equal surprise, swiftly curling chained, bloody legs in toward itself in what was most likely the only defensive action it could manage.

And it was human.

Shocked into temporary paralysis, Hermione stared down at the young man before her in unutterable horror. Nearly every part of his visible body was one ugly purple and blue bruise, more welts, gashes, and discolorations lining what skin she could see that wasn't covered with chains, dirt, or blood. His face was severely smudged with what could have been soot, the left side of it swelled to an abnormal size and the right side bruised in such a way that she was positive she could see individual finger marks on the battered skin.

The person on the other side of the bars, for his part, looked rather frozen in place as well. In fact, his entire face looked utterly exhausted as he mutely returned her shaken gaze with the most unique shade of pale gray eyes that Hermione had ever seen… except for those belonging to one other person. One other person who she had just seen shooting Unforgivables at Order members during the final battle.

_Sweet Merlin._

"_Malfoy?"_ she gasped in a hushed whisper, blinking in horrified shock as her eyes raked over his form once again.

Were it not for those eyes, she would have never recognized him.

This Draco Malfoy's appearance was as far a cry from the impeccably-groomed, aristocratic Draco Malfoy of Universe A as he could probably get. Dressed in nothing but literally tattered rags, he was absolutely filthy, covered in grime and God only knew what else, more gaunt than the Draco Malfoy of her world had been near the end of sixth year, his trademark, platinum blond hair matted dark with dirt and blood…

"_Draco_ Malfoy?" she repeated dumbly, unable to tear her gaze away from the awfulness of seeing a familiar face in a state like this, no matter how much of a horrible git he'd been in her world. Sure, Hermione had seen unspeakable horrors while running from Voldemort, while fighting off twenty thousand Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself, but in this universe, it wasn't even _wartime, _and she found herself asking the heartbreaking question that she had asked far, far too many times in her relatively short span of eighteen years.

_Dear God, how can anyone do this to another human being? How can anyone do this to __**any**__living thing?_

In one fell swoop, everything that had built up inside of her throughout what was turning out to be the worst day of her life, every hysterical, panicked, overwhelmed emotion that Hermione had desperately tried to block out, both from this foreign, terrifying universe as well as the fierce rollercoaster of a final battle from her own, slammed into her like a ton of bricks.

In absolute exhaustion, she sank to her knees in the thick, damp grass beside the cage, her tired but still observant eyes mechanically taking in the way Malfoy's arms were awkwardly pulled behind him, as if restrained. He might have been Draco Malfoy, it was true, but he was still a person. And anyway, hadn't he fought with the people who were supposed to be the 'good guys' in this Universe?

"What have they done to you?" she whispered, though the answer was quite obvious.

In response, Malfoy's split, bloodied lips wordlessly parted slightly, his first movement in at least a minute, his breaths audibly growing more ragged, his indecipherable gray stare never leaving hers.

Ronáld.

Ronáld had done this, she realized, a surge of hatred toward her best friend's Universe B counterpart sweeping through her nerves with a ferocity that surprised even her. Both Hagrid and Filch had referred to someone called 'His Lordship' who had already taught Malfoy a lesson, and "Lord" Ronáld Weasley owned Malfoy. From the way he'd nearly jumped her in the train, Hermione certainly wouldn't put anything like this past him.

And she was supposed to pretend to be his girlfriend.

She was supposed to believe in what _they_ believed in.

But who could even _pretend_ to believe in this?

_**How can I live in this world?**_

Suddenly, Hermione was jolted back to the horrible reality around her as Malfoy's swollen lips parted once more, and his incomprehensible gaze swiftly dropped toward the cage floor. "Lady Evans," he said hoarsely, his gravelly voice surprisingly formal and stiff. "What – "

Abruptly, his shoulders lurched forward as a ragged cough burst from his mouth. The motherly concern that Hermione had always easily felt for those she encountered flooded her yet again as he turned his face into his far shoulder, coughing roughly against it. Instinctively, she reached out toward him, but when her fingers brushed the metal bars of the cage she quickly drew her hand away as his coughs faded.

He swallowed visibly, briefly closed his eyes, and then attempted verbalization again. "Come for a - a bit more – fun at my expense, have you?" he rasped in broken speech, his voice either hoarse with disuse or over-use. As if, even though he had hardly made a sound during the Crutiatus, somewhere, sometime in the relatively recent past, he'd been screaming for hours.

With considerable effort, Hermione forced the ghastly conjecture from her mind, but it was quickly replaced by another equally ghastly one. What did he mean, 'Come for a bit _more_ fun at my expense?' Had she – or My – done something to him before?

_Oh God_— Swiftly, Hermione offered up a small prayer that _she_ hadn't been the one who'd done this to him, though she somehow doubted it – her impression of My was that of a selfish, spoiled, and somewhat idiotic girl who wouldn't want to get her hands dirty like this. But even still…

For the first time in her entire life, Hermione Granger had absolutely no idea of what to say.

She finally managed to choke out an intelligible response; one that wouldn't give anything away, just in case… Just in case. "I haven't, actually," she answered softly, swallowing back another wave of nausea at the same time that her eyes landed on the lock to the cage's door. Without thinking to scrutinize his reaction to her words, she aimed her wand at the lock. "Alohomora!"

Nothing happened.

_Of course, it's specialized. Not even a madman would put a simple lock on something like this._

Malfoy finally lifted his head again, his tangled hair loosely falling into his face, a far cry from the usual slickness that was typically favored by him rather than Ron. Impassively, his tired eyes followed her motions, but the hardness in them unexpectedly began to glimmer with the tiniest sprig of emotion.

Hermione suspected that it was either bewilderment or confusion. Or both.

"You can't open it, you know," he suddenly murmured, the few words voiced in a heavy, wholly defeated tone that she had never dreamed she would ever hear pass the arrogant and proud Draco Malfoy's lips. "Though it's rather nice of you for trying."

Even though his last remark did have a somewhat sarcastic, or perhaps skeptical, edge to it, Hermione was still partially unable to fathom the complete lack of sneering contempt in his voice – that seeming to have been replaced by an almost unnatural quiet evenness she had occasionally heard in Remus Lupin's tone, but never from the mouth of a boy her age.

Briefly shaking her head, she quickly turned back to the task at hand. Calculatingly, she regarded the lock with narrowed eyes before glancing back at him through the bars. "What kind of alteration did that _weasel_ of a redhead put on it?" she practically spat out, her eyes darkening the instant the very thought of Ronáld re-entered her mentality.

Malfoy's gaze flew toward her. "Is that – Is that a question you'd actually like me to _answer,_ Miss?" he slowly asked after a moment, the smallest tinge of bafflement shining through his even voice for the first time.

'_Miss?' _

Hermione started at the formal title that had slipped out of his mouth as if it was her given name, but she quickly shook herself out of it. No doubt _Ronáld_ had grilled into him the importance of respectfully addressing anyone who was not in a cage, she thought in disgust.

"Erm… Yes, that would be quite lovely," she said distractedly, preoccupied with her thoughts. As soon as the words passed her lips, however, she mentally smacked herself and barely held back a disgusted snort. _Good heavens, Hermione! What, are you at a bloody tea party?_

As if Malfoy was thinking the same thing, his abused features shifted to hold something very much akin to suspicion, before he turned his gaze back toward the stone wall surrounding the courtyard. "Auditory," he said in a hoarse mutter, coughing softly.

"Of course, aural-targeted locks," she muttered to herself, nodding as she re-familiarized herself with the rather standard security quirk that would only open if Ronáld's or Ginevra's voice commanded it to do so. There weren't too many ways to get around those, short of becoming the person, or using Polyjuice… That is, if a ward hadn't been set up against it.

_Anyway, even if you __**would**__ have gotten it open, what then? Free him and run away into the night?_

Somehow, she doubted escape would be that easy.

Sighing, Hermione perspicaciously looked back at Malfoy, and she started slightly when she found that he was already surveying her in pretty much the same fashion. He swiftly averted his gaze before she could shoot him a questioning look, however, and a few seconds later, he shifted a bit, wincing, under her own gaze, looking distinctly uncomfortable, the clinking sound of metal scraping against metal accompanying even this small motion.

Abruptly becoming aware of her own actions, Hermione blinked rapidly and looked away as well. Honestly, from the dialogue they'd already shared, she couldn't quite yet tell if or how different he was from her version of Draco Malfoy, or whether or not he was a good person, even, a person she might be able to trust… save for his eyes. Even unreadable as they were, his eyes were filled with more emotion than she had ever seen in Draco Malfoy's eyes. Plus, he'd made no attempt to call her 'Mudblood,' which was always a good sign –

"-uddy birds won't be a problem anymore, that's fer sure."

_Oh shit, they're coming back, _she thought frantically, immediately leaping to her feet as a deep, hearty but not at all comforting chuckle rang out in the not-so-far distance. Malfoy stiffened as well, so much so that he accidentally jerked back against the bars of the cage. Instantly, he sucked in a short, pained gasp, which quickly turned into a hacking cough that he desperately tried to muffle.

The sound shot a jolt of compassion through Hermione's heart, and halfway between sprinting off and reaching for the tarp to cover the cage again, she crouched back down at the side of the enclosement. "Malfoy. What hurts the most?" she whispered urgently, ignoring her mind's panicked chants of _Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!_

Malfoy's gaze listlessly shifted in her direction without really finding her face. "What -_ What?"_ he suddenly repeated swiftly between coughs, as if the true meaning of her words had just sunk into his mind. He squinted up at her without bothering to hide the disbelief scrawled across his expression.

"You're obviously injured; what part of you hurts the most?" she enunciated clearly, rapidly glancing through the arch and the narrow view of the grounds it gave. Nothing yet, but Hagrid's vociferous complaints were getting louder and louder -

Malfoy stared at her, eyes frozen, and, for a split second, his clearly exhausted gray pools were suddenly filled with so much tangible, unspeakable emotion that Hermione felt as if she could actually see into his very soul - but, in the next heartbeat, the door shut, leaving her at a very well-guarded wall. "My… back," he said slowly, quietly, his gaze briefly searching hers before he looked away.

Hermione frowned at this odd location. She could name about 50 other injuries _not_on his back that, from her point of view, looked to be absolutely excruciating, but she nodded and drew her wand nonetheless, praying that Hagrid moved as slowly in this world as he did in hers. "All right, show me."

Suspicion sprang back to Malfoy's expression, but, as if he grasped the necessity for speed, he acquiesced. Haltingly bowing his head away from her, he clenched his jaw and awkwardly shifted around until his back was to her. His hands were indeed chained behind him, and Hermione bit back a hot wave of anger when she noticed that the grubby skin around and beneath the bindings was bleeding and rubbed raw -

But all of that didn't matter the instant that her gaze traveled up to his back. Through the many jagged tears in the rough, blood-soaked material that was his clothing, it was impossible to miss the multiple bloody, inflamed lines crisscrossing the bruised skin. Whip lashes.

Tiredly pressing his right cheek against the bars of the far side of the cage in an attempt to keep himself upright, Malfoy's eyes wordlessly slid sideways as if trying to gauge her reaction through his peripheral vision, his chest raggedly rising and falling more quickly.

"Right. Good choice," Hermione lamely said after her heart had begun to beat again, swallowing back a fresh wave of nausea at the grisly sight.

_Note to self: Do not, __**do not**__ get caught alone with Lord Ronáld Weasley. _

Swiftly, she lowered her wand on the torn skin. Malfoy visibly tensed, closing his eyes, which led her to wonder if he expected the spell that she would utter to be more along the lines of something 'fun at his expense' rather than one that would heal a part of his pain.

To squelch his doubts, Hermione quickly murmured a fast healing spell, one of many she'd picked up during the war, and a soft orange glow settled over his rough clothing, if it could even be called that. The cuts and welts covering it quickly vanished, leaving in their place nothing but thin scars that Hermione, unfortunately, could not prevent without the help of an actual medicinal potion. On second thought, she hurriedly added to that incantation one that cleared the lungs of any invasive fluid that might have been behind his cough.

As the glow soaked into his back itself and then faded completely, Malfoy's eyes flew open. She watched as, slowly, he looked down at his chest and visibly, experimentally took a deep breath. Hermione held her own breath, then released it with a weak, relieved smile when he didn't begin coughing. _Thank Merlin, __**something's**__ gone right._

Slumping against the bars, the Slytherin twisted back toward her, an unreadable intensity in his eyes that caught her completely off guard, that she had only seen in the eyes of _her _Harry, and even that occurred only very rarely. "I don't understand," he whispered hoarsely, true emotion breaking up the defeated levelness of his voice.

Oddly enough, something about that moment caused Hermione to believe more firmly than ever that she was not at all dealing with the same Draco Malfoy that she had always known and despised. Her eyes still reflecting the horror that she felt at the abuse he had suffered, she stared back down at him. "Neither do I," she managed to murmur.

"- take care 'a this runt up here an' then we're done fer the night!" Abruptly, another bark of laughter rang out from somewhere far, far too close for comfort.

Without another word, Hermione breathlessly flung the cover over his cage and sprang to her feet, shooting herself with another Disillusionment charm so that anyone with an untrained eye who might look in her direction would only see whatever it was that may have been behind her.

Luckily for her, both Hagrid and Filch must not have been Mad-Eye Moody material, either, because neither noticed her standing out in the open as they came into sight, nearly to the crest of the relievedly sizeable hill atop which the archway into the courtyard stood.

_Thank Merlin for Disillusionments. _

"Keep this secret, Malfoy," she swiftly breathed to the rectangular-shaped cloth.

It wasn't much of a command, but it was all she had to rely on. Even though any response that might have come from the cage was drowned out but a suddenly animated conversation marking Hagrid and Filch's return, she had a sneaking suspicion that he probably wasn't going to go running to his 'Master' about My Evans' suddenly advanced magical healing ability.

Silently, Hermione carefully backed away from the center of the courtyard. She shuddered as she narrowly avoided a head-on collision with Filch while Hagrid expertly flicked a wand at the cage and said clearly, "Wingardium Leviosa!"

It was still inconceivable to her, the fact that he could use magic, so he obviously hadn't been expelled from Hogwarts… Merlin, _everything _here was so different; would she ever get used to it?

_No, Hermione, remember, you're going to find a way back, _she told herself firmly. _There's got to be a way out of this horrible place, and you're going to find it and take it. You're going to get home!_

For some reason, an image of Draco Malfoy's sooty, bruised face flashed to the forefront of her mind at this thought, staring at her with unreadable eyes that were still loaded with more benign emotion in them than in any other person she'd yet seen in this world, let alone the Draco Malfoy of her world.

Her arrival back to the hallway entrance, however, marked the end of her pensive thoughts, as basic hiding and evading instincts took precedence… and, clutching the yearbook, she ran for the Head common room without looking back.

**A/N: **Well, there you go. First intro to the Draco of this world. Obviously there's much more to him than that, but they're both sort of in a bad place right now. And for those of you who are curious; he's not going to be a mirror image of Universe A Harry at all; he's definitely his own unique person here. Feedback is good; I'm always curious to know what you think! Thank you so much for all of your support on the previous chapters, including bearing with the influx of new information/surroundings… There's a lot of new stuff to absorb, and I'll try to keep it as straightforward as possible!

In addition, for those of you who read this right after I post it and might wonder at some obvious typos - this site occasionally crunches some words together after uploading the chapter... I don't know why, but it does, so I try to scan through it as soon as I can afterward and fix them.

Reviews make my day:-)

Cheers all.

LM


	5. The Moving Statue

**The Moving Statue**

Monday, August 28, 9:15 P.M.

The second she was safely within the depths of the castle and a good five-minutes walk from the courtyard, Hermione swerved to her left. A moment before, she was convinced that she'd heard a muffled scream from beyond the walls beside her, and she shivered, ducking behind the nearest statue, just to be safe. This one was of a Vampire, and it was so eerily life-like that she nearly had a heart attack when she got a clear view of it and checked about five times to make sure it wasn't.

Finally convinced of the statue's inanimate state, she focused her attention on the real reason why she'd stopped making for the Head common room like a bat out of hell: the Yearbook. Practically ripping it out from under her arm, she breathlessly flipped through it, nearly dropping it twice in her haste to find what she was looking for.

_Ravenclaw… Hufflepuff… Hufflepuff … Gryffindor… Gryffindor… Gryffindor… Gryffindor… __**Gryffindor?**__ - Good Merlin, you'd think there's only one House; I can take a fair guess as to where all the first years want to be sorted… Gryffindor __**again, **__my God…_

Suddenly, a flash of green passed by, and she swiftly caught the page. _Ah-ha._

The section was so small when compared to the half a book of red and gold, and the remainder of it of the other Houses, Hermione wasn't surprised that she almost hadn't even seen it, as if whoever had been in charge of the Yearbook had done their best to obliterate the knowledge of this particular House's existence altogether.

Quickly, she shifted the rather bulky book in her arms and whispered, "Lumos," –

" 'ey, Macmillan! Is it true you managed to snuff a Firestorm out of the parents?"

"Bloody well straight I did. Got an extra one, too, if anyone else on the team wants one, so my Gringotts account is open for offers -"

_If only I had Harry's Invisibility Cloak! _Hermione thought in frustration as fairly mature voices echoed down the corridor, signifying that the Welcome Feast must have come to an end. Quickly extinguishing the light, she pressed herself deeper into the wall behind the Vampire, still under the Disillusionment, as a group of older Hufflepuffs nosily passed, Ernie Macmillan at the center….

"-going to _murder _the Ravenclaws, Chang and Boot don't even have a Firebolt; can you imagine?"

…and not sounding much like the patient, kind, and gentle Hufflepuffs of her world, either.

Hermione let out the breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding when they made it to the far end of the hall. A second later, her wand was lit and her eyes were on the Yearbook again, perusing the sole two pages – the back of one and the front of another– dedicated to the House of Slytherin.

Even with what few group pictures it held, though, it was instantly obvious that there was something very different about this House than there was from the arrogant smirks and haughty smiles and cold glares from Gryffindor, or even from similar ones from much of Hufflepuff.

Scanning the individual student photos, photos of people whom Hermione had only ever seen sneering, or scowling… Now, the only feeling the images gave – was positively radiating from them, actually - was one of pure genuineness. Bright, true smiles lit the faces of nearly every Slytherin, save a few first and second years who were impishly making faces at the camera.

As opposed to the wholly insincere lot of Gryffindors, the Slytherins looked truly happy.

And these happy students in the photographs – no matter that they had been pricks in her world; it was clear to her that they were very different here, and _she _was the prick – these happy people were now being treated as if they were less than human.

Hermione didn't want to imagine what it was like to be a House-Wizard in a Dark, totalitarian wizarding world. Frankly, she hadn't the foggiest idea – it wasn't as if she'd had any need to learn the intricacies of slavery-type bonds in her world. Not only had they been outlawed since 1897, she had simply been too engrossed in learning every ounce of information and incantations that she, Harry, and Ron would need to survive – both in a war and out of one.

Eventually, her eyes were inevitably drawn to a small group picture at the bottom of the page, recognizably taken outside The Three Broomsticks in the thick of winter. In it were none other than a fifth year Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson, and Draco Malfoy.

In it, Malfoy had snuck up behind the dark skinned boy and dumped a pile of snow on his head. Pansy took one look at the expression of utter indignance that had instantly exploded across Blaise's face and started to crack up, particularly when Malfoy narrowly avoided a snowball á là Blaise. Wisely scooting around Pansy, the laughing blond caught her up in a bear hug from behind, turning her into a shield between him and Blaise. This, incidentally, only caused her to laugh harder and wiggle around in his grasp, trying to shoo him away so that Blaise could get another go at him. In the end, all three of them fell in a heap on the snowy ground, laughing wildly, and then the photographic loop began again.

An hour ago, the animated-ness of three teenagers whom Hermione had always known as nothing but 'pompous gits,' in the words of Ron, may have surprised her, but, after her encounter with Malfoy, Hermione doubted there was much left that had the power to catch her off guard anymore.

She lost track of the amount of time that she simply stood there and stared at the image, quelling the waves of nausea and absolute aloneness that began to sweep through her at alarming rates. It reminded her so much of _her _Ron and _her _Harry, the friendship between them that had roughed out even the darkest of times, and the world that she had been inexplicably ripped from…

To here. A living hell of nothing but darkness in which the people she loved had turned into the very people she had been fighting against; here, where she doubted an ounce of good even _existed,_ or at least not one that wasn't tossed into a rubbish bin and chained away…

Finally, Hermione took a deep, calming breath, briefly closed her eyes, and then opened them again, forcing herself to focus on studying the individuals. She didn't know Blaise very well, so it was difficult to make comparisons, but Pansy was a different story. She wasn't buried under the loads of make-up and accessories that she had always worn in Hermione's world, and, with said girl smiling in a surprisingly shy manner, Hermione was struck by the unexpected glow of understated beauty about her.

Somewhat hesitantly, she moved on to the last member of what must have been a trio. His graphic, battered form was still hauntingly fresh in her memory, which was why looking down at the Draco Malfoy of three years ago was like looking at a completely different person.

Instead of being snarled dark with muck and blood, Malfoy's white-blond hair was loose, locks of it falling messily into his eyes, which were sparkling in a mischievous, curiously Dumbledore-esque manner. His pale features, flushed from the cold, were completely relaxed and comfortable despite the fact that Blaise was in hot pursuit, an easy smile on his face rather than a smirk.

Save for his distinct gray eyes and fair hair, he hardly resembled the great bouncing ferret of her world, let alone the caged, beaten young man she had seen less than fifteen minutes earlier.

Breathing hard, Hermione slammed the Yearbook shut and leaned her head back against the hard, cold stones of the hallway wall, finally allowing her exhausted eyes to fall shut. She had absolutely no desire to see any more pictures of laughing individuals when she knew that the light in their eyes had most certainly been snuffed out since -

A low, scraping noise, as if stone was grinding against stone, rudely interrupted her thoughts.

Her eyes flew open, and she stiffened quickly, her gaze swiftly darting around her in a vain attempt to locate the source of the sudden sound. What was…

Suddenly, inches beside her, the Vampire statue itself slowly began to move.

Hermione let out a muffled squeak of surprise and leapt out of the niche and into the deserted hallway. Forgetting her Disillusionment cover, she desperately searched for some kind of sister statue, or _any _kind of object that she could hide behind, but nothing else lined the corridor but bare stone walls, and she doubted that she would reach the next hallway, meters and meters and _meters _away, in time…

Sweet Merlin, she needed to be invisible!

_Invisible…_

In the process of quickly backing down the hallway, Hermione froze as the notion struck her. An Invisibility charm, of _course! _It would be so simple…

It would be so impossible.

After all, the main reason behind the invention of the Invisibility Cloak was because the charm itself was at such a high degree of magical difficulty that it was rarer to find a person who could complete it than a person who owned a Cloak. No matter how hard Hermione had tried to teach herself from The Highest Educational Level of Charms and Enchantments book, one of the few she'd taken with her after the Golden Trio had fled Hogwarts their seventh year, the Invisibility charm and the few spells at or above its level represented the one barrier that even the most intelligent witch of her age had not yet been able to cross.

Despite the heavy odds against her, Hermione mentally ran through the unspoken charm, her pulse pounding loudly in her ears. The statue would not have been moving unless someone was going to emerge from it – someone who, most likely, was not on Hermione's side – and if she did nothing short of literally disappearing…

Well, Hermione didn't fancy being caught wandering by herself around lesser-used corridors of Hogwarts, nor did she fancy the thought of being Obliviated to erase from her memory an entrance to something that she might not have been supposed to see. After all, this moving statue had never been recorded on even the Marauder's Map.

_Alright, Hermione, this is nothing compared to the Final Battle. Just calm down and think. __**Focus.**__ You have time. Take it, and do the spell right the first time. _

_Because that'll probably be the only chance you get._

As the Vampire came to a halt, revealing a rather large, gaping black hole in the stone floor, Hermione quickly inhaled several breaths and squeezed her eyes shut, gripping her wand as she swiftly turned it on herself. Once she was sufficiently de-panicked, she deliberately, systematically summoned her store of magic until she could feel it humming through her veins, and, with every ounce of will she possessed, channeling every inch of magic in her body toward the single word, she thought, _OCCAECO!_

"- waste of time and space. Be _done_ with him already, for Merlin's sake! I have better things to do with my time than trying to keep him functional enough to answer the Phoenix's questions."

_Please work, please work, oh __**God**__ please work…_

Swiftly, Hermione opened her brown orbs in time to see an almost unrecognizable Minerva McGonagall herself climbing out of the hole as if there were stairs beneath it, a pointed wizard's hat in hand as if the ceiling beneath had been too low for her to wear it. Stepping aside and straightening rich, very clearly marked Headmistress robes, McGonagall absently threw a glance in Hermione's direction… and looked straight through her.

Letting out a breath, the fingers of her wand hand still warm and tingling with magic, Hermione's shoulders slumped, briefly closing her eyes in amazement and relief. _Thank __**Merlin,**__ the spell must have worked! _

The knowledge that she could finally perform an Invisibility charm lifted loads of pressure off her shoulders. As long as the talent wasn't a one-time fluke, she was one of a very small percentage of the population who had the ability to do so… With it, _so_ many opportunities would be available to her!

Feeling a bit giddy and rather pleased with herself, Hermione's gaze shifted back across the hallway to study her former Transfiguration professor. The woman's face looked startlingly younger and much less wrinkled, almost as if she'd had Muggle plastic surgery – Hermione laughed to herself at the idea, but the fact that McGonagall did appear less aged remained nonetheless – but most shockingly, perhaps, was her hair. Always pulled back in a severe bun, it was now smoothly down and framing her face in a sleek, unbelievably chic Pageboy cut, the gray dyed pure silver.

And she was wearing _make-up. _

Curiosity keeping her in place, Hermione gaped at the older woman, both astonished and a bit horrified by this change, as she continued to speak to a slender figure draped in a black, hooded cloak who was also ascending from the well-guarded gap in the floor. "It's been fourteen years, and he still hasn't said a word that you want to hear. Somehow, I don't think you're going to get much more -"

Abruptly, the cloaked person beside the older woman held up a hand. Hermione was surprised when McGonagall actually obeyed the motion and stopped her line of thought, looking more annoyed than exasperated. "My lady, what – "

"I… felt something, a second ago," a younger, very feminine voice slowly said in an almost sultry, breathy tone that sounded very much like the one that Hermione was trying to feign. The unknown woman's head tilted over her shoulder toward McGonagall, then fluidly twisted back toward the very wall at which Hermione stood. "Something… _powerful._ Something dangerous."

The 'I-am-untouchable' sensation that the Invisibility charm had inadvertently left in Hermione's mentality quickly began to fade at the unconcealed authority dripping from the woman's low purr as she continued with an eerily too-calm air, "Something that I haven't felt here in a long time, Minerva."

Even though Hermione knew that the woman couldn't possibly see her, something in the tone that she had just used sent a jolt of terror into the Head Girl's heart. She knew that tone. It was a troublingly intelligent one, a dark, calculating one, just like the kind Voldemort would always use before he –

_Oh __**God!**_

Her heart pounding wildly, Hermione instinctively fell to her knees and then flat to the ground a split second before the woman unexpectedly flung the point of her wand toward the spot where Hermione's head would have still been a heartbeat before. _"SPECIALIS REVELIO!"_

The force behind the spell was so powerful that it slammed into the wall behind Hermione with a resounding _Crack!, _instantly charring the stones around the impact point black and sending a shower of sparks flying.

In the pause that followed, Hermione gasped in a silent breath of relief, clutching at the cobblestones of the hallway floor. Looking up again, she desperately tried to see the cloaked woman's features, but the long, draping hood blocked all visibility of them except a slender, pale jaw line leading to a pair of deeply red lips that were currently pursed in the same manner Hermione's own did whenever she was deep in thought.

_Dear God, who __**is **__this?_

"Satisfied?" McGonagall finally asked patronizingly, apparently not sharing the woman's concern nor her heightened senses. She reached over into the Vampire statue's gaping mouth, maneuvering between two fangs, and briefly held her hand somewhere behind them with a mutter of, "Intercido."

As the statue again rumbled to life and shifted back over the gaping black hole in the floor below it, the cloaked figure's head cocked slightly in Hermione's direction. "Hm," she said coolly. Ignoring the Headmistress's question and the fact that she had just damaged Hogwarts property, she crisply turned on her heel and briskly began striding down the hall. "Must have been nothing."

For as offhanded as she had thrown out the words, Hermione didn't think that she sounded entirely convinced.

_Lovely. I've been here for a little less than six hours, and I've already drawn a great deal of very much unwanted attention to myself. While I'm invisible, no less!_

"Of course." McGonagall caught up with her quickly, carefully fitting her pointed wizards cap back over her head. "Hagrid is moving the transferable House-Wizards and Witches back in today; the castle does feel out of sorts with those filthy creatures being taken about the main corridors."

The response was sharp, crisp, and detached. "Regardless, if even the slightest hint of suspicious behavior is displayed by either student, staff, or otherwise, you know where to report it. We have plenty of people who specifically specialize in… interrogation."

"Oh, the faculty and students are well aware of that; it's always best to keep a close eye on things so soon after a rebellion. Do you want me to find the current password to your children's common room?"

"No. I spoke with them earlier; I have no desire to see either again for at least a month. I'll get it the next time Our Sovereign wants a personal cross-examination of –"

As their voices faded around a corner and down the next hall, Hermione quickly rose to her feet, straightening her impossibly tight uniform and wincing as she rubbed her knees where she had fallen on them. Within seconds, however, her eyes were drawn back to the point at which the spell and wall had collided.

It was still smoking.

Thoroughly shaken, Hermione abruptly took a rapid step backward, and then another, until she was blindly backing down the entire length of the hallway in the opposite direction that McGonagall and the other woman had walked, her mind… shell shocked.

Of course, Hermione had guessed that this ruling Sovereignty had to have been both intelligent and vicious to have so completely won both of the wars that the Conservative forces had waged against them, but this was the first time that she had actually _witnessed_ that power… and what she had just seen and heard had scared her more than she expected it would, more than reading about the Dark history of this world, more than seeing how terribly Draco Malfoy was being treated, and almost more than seeing how different Ronáld and Harry and Ginevra were from her beloved versions of them.

She had always had magical talent – for Merlin's sake, she had just completed one of the most difficult charms known to the Magical world! - but for all of her knowledge and the power that it gave her, she was only one person. In her world, even in the midst of the war, she had always had someone behind her, whether it was Harry or Ron, or one of her classmates, or the Weasleys, or the Order of the Phoenix.

Now, were she to somehow be picked out or suspected as a Light supporter, whether by an automatic display of repugnance at the cruel mistreatment of any human being or magical creature, or by even the slightest hesitance to act like _they _did, or even by a slight slip of her mannerisms… she had no one.

She was nothing but a tiny, solitary pinhead of light in a pitch black Great Hall, and if she wasn't vigilant of her words and actions during every moment of every second of every day, the humane, intelligent beliefs with which she had been raised and cherished deeply could very well get her 'interrogated.'

Or killed.

**9:47 P.M.**

Because the painting that covered the entrance to the Head common room was a still life of a rather chilling night scene of what looked to be the Forbidden Forest, and was therefore unable to relay a message to whoever was inside, Hermione stared at the canvas for at least a minute before she gathered enough dignity to lift her hand and knock.

And knock.

And knock.

_Come on, Harry, I know you're in there._

Sighing in frustration, she unsteadily shoved a hand through her unnaturally smooth tresses and blew out a shaky breath, still shaken from her too-close-for-comfort encounter. After a moment, she lifted her hand to pound on the wall beside the life-sized frame once more when an abrupt thump and subsequent painting shift revealed Harry's scowling form.

It was odd, but he really was… much taller, broader than she remembered him being. Could a person grow more in one world than he did in the other?

"About bloody time," he muttered, instantly turning on his heel and stalking back into the depths of the common room. Although on a slightly smaller scale, it seemed to be modeled after the Gryffindor common room, complete with a crackling fireplace and a definite red and gold color scheme… probably because they were both in Gryffindor.

Hermione decided not to tell him that the reason for his current irritation with her was because she had had to make a complete lap around the castle in the opposite direction of the Common Room in an effort to avoid the new McGonagall and the dangerous, unfamiliar woman who was with her.

Forcing an expression of indifference to her face, Hermione instantly changed her walk to a strut and slinked into the room. "So sorry," she began offhandedly, raising her voice a few notches and softening it to more of a purr, "I simply seem to have gotten myself… turned around a bit."

"Gotten yourself 'turned around a bit?' " Harry scathingly echoed, stiffly pausing at the foot of the staircase up to his dorms without turning around. "In a school that you've attended for almost seven years, you've gotten yourself 'turned around?' " He snorted, shaking his head, and crossed his arms. "That's so like you, My. That's so like you."

For someone who'd said hardly a word on the train, not even to his girlfriend, he certainly didn't seem to have any trouble coming up with insults for her now.

"Now, now, Harry," she cooed and held back a wince of disgust at her own tone, carefully picking over her words so she sounded appropriately My-like - or what she hoped was appropriately My-like - while trying to extract information from him at the same time, "We used to be _such_ good friends… and now, we're practically family," she added in a sickly sweet voice, giving him a little, deliberately artificial smile. "Why oh _why_ do you hate me so?"

Instantly, Harry's head swiveled toward her, his eyes narrowed dangerously. "No matter what sort of magic the adoptive enchantments work, you will _never_ be my sister," he spat acidly, his speech unnaturally slow, as if he was doing everything possible to reign in a wave of fury. He lowered a loathing glower on her that would have terrified any Death Eater in her world. "And you know damn well why I hate you, I'm not about to play this game again."

_All right, don't even try to deny it, then._

"But you know as well as I do that I have such a _terrible_ long-term memory," Hermione breathed saucily, prowling up directly behind him and idly tracing her fingertips down the smooth wood of the banister. She paused in her motion and glanced up at him demurely. "Why don't you… tell me again?"

Harry briefly stared down at her, emerald eyes that had initially been lifeless suddenly dark in fury, before he yanked himself a foot or two away from her. "Go to _hell,_ Granger, you bloody well deserve to be there!" he hissed, spinning without another word and loudly storming up to his room, his door slamming with a _BANG!_

Hermione gaped at the now-shut door in shock: A. At hearing her best friend - or someone who looked exactly like her best friend, even though he wasn't really anymore - spit words of detestation directly in her face, and B… First Draco Malfoy's 'come for a bit _more _fun' comment, and now what had My done to _Harry?_

While what she had seen of Ronáld and even Ginevra so far had led Hermione to gather that both siblings certainly seemed to have definite malicious streaks in then, Harry didn't seem like he was entirely evil, in the worst sense of the word. He just seemed... angry. And empty. And that was really all. What had happened to him, to make him that way?

Hermione mused over it for a second, then shook her head tiredly. It was a mystery. This _entire world _was a mystery to her.

But, if all went well, she wasn't planning to let it remain that way for long.

Well, at least she'd played My well, Hermione supposed. The breathy, insincere, seemingly naïve but in reality far from it, over-exaggerated Marilyn Monroe type seemed to be working perfectly, but so far, all it had gotten her was that yes, she had definitely been adopted by the Evans/Potters, and yes, Harry hated her with a passion for a reason that she should apparently be well aware of.

Sighing heavily, she trudged up the stairs to the Head Girl suite, unable to hold back several successive and rather massive yawns. All she wanted was for this to be a horrible dream – or nightmare, really; for her to fall asleep and to wake up in the middle of the very battlefield from which she'd come.

At this thought, she nearly laughed – Imagine, that she'd rather be there, at the final battle, than safe – "safe" – at Hogwarts! It was ridiculous!

This… This was all _absolutely_ ridiculous!

Wearily removing the makeup from her face with a mumbled cleaning spell, Hermione blearily stumbled to the easy-to-find, bulky bed and collapsed onto it without even bothering to turn on the light, without looking around what had become her temporary new home… even without removing her clothes.

**A/N:** Welcome to all new readers!!! Thank you so much for your great reviews. Hope the week is going well for you; reviews make my day:-)

Cheers all.

LM


	6. Changing Alliances

**Changing Alliances**

_The hunt to find methods for Voldemort's destruction had gone slowly but surely, just like she had remembered it going… That is, until the Battle of Knockturn Alley in their attempt to reach a valuable encyclopedia of ancient spells from a dodgy bookstore there._

"_**REDUCTO!" **_

_Hermione blasted her way out of the bookstore, sending several Death Eaters flying backward as the store door slammed into them on its chaotic explosion outward. "Harry, I've got it!" she shouted over the volume of the battle, clutching the book in her left arm as she lunged out of Tomes and Tonics and hurtled toward her friend, who was fighting alongside Remus Lupin several yards away. "I've got it; we've got to get out of here __**now!"**_

_Harry fired off a blue jet of magic, its incantation lost in the melee, then swiftly turned toward her and yelled in reply, "Find Ron and go! I'll be along in a min–"_

_His words were prematurely cut short. _

_At that moment, instead of managing to dodge Snape's Sectumsempra like he had in Hermione's memory, he got caught dead in the middle of it, and his blood – his blood was suddenly everywhere._

"_**Harry!" **_

Hermione let out a muffled shriek and heaved herself straight up in bed, gasping in panicked breaths.

_It was only a nightmare, it was only a nightmare…_

CRASH!

Her already frantically beating heart nearly stopped when the abrupt noise ricocheted off the walls to her right. Without even thinking, her mind whirred into defensive mode. Before she even realized that she'd moved, her wand was in her hand, pointing in the direction from which the loud sound had come. The bedroom was dark, and she had absolutely no idea what time it was, but she definitely knew that there was someone else inside.

Tuesday, August 29, 7:01 A.M.

Clenching the bed's comforter in one hand, Hermione quickly muttered a general lighting spell, and illumination flickered to every nearby lamp and candle. Narrowing her eyes, her gaze swept across the luxuriously large room. For her being a Gryffindor, it was decorated in deep burgundies and violets; there was a typical desk, a bureau, bookcases, what looked like a door that possibly led to a bathroom, everything incredibly orderly… and empty.

But Hermione knew that she hadn't imagined the crash.

Whether under Invisibility Cloak or charm, someone else had definitely been in there, and she was just about to shout _"Accio _intruder!" when she heard the softest of tinkling just beyond the large bed.

Frowning, she crawled out from under the covers and cautiously prowled across the bed on her hands and knees…

And nearly had a heart attack when a head appeared beyond the pile of blankets she had heaped at the foot of the bed sometime during the night. From the way both persons froze, it was difficult to tell who was more surprised, Hermione or the thin, white-faced girl whose pale countenance was even more accented by her dark hair, pulled back into a tight braid.

The girl from the Yearbook picture.

It took Hermione more than a couple of seconds to register that this was Pansy Parkinson, and at least a few more to figure out how to proceed from there.

_But… Why is she __**in**__ my room? At seven in the morning! _

_Wait… I __**own**__ Pansy. _

She held back a shudder at this thought, still partially afraid to open her mouth for fear that something intelligent would pop out. Should she pretend to be My? But if she did… that would mean that she'd most likely have to be horrible to Pansy, which Hermione flat-out refused to do.

On the other hand, Hermione wasn't at all prepared to trust anyone with the fact that she was someone else entirely, and someone who'd played a powerful hand in dealing the end card to the Dark Lord of her universe at that, no matter if Pansy was supposed to be on the 'good side.' The words she had heard the night before were still all too hauntingly fresh in her mind:

"_Regardless, if even the slightest amount of suspicious behavior is displayed… you know where to report it."_

"_Oh, the faculty __**and**__ students are well aware of that…" _

So who should she be? My? Hermione? A mix of both?

Her mind still attempting to decide upon the best modus operandi, Hermione absently looked back down at the other girl. Pansy was wearing what appeared to be a frumpled, worn gray uniform, her hands poised, frozen, above a cascade of broken that glass lay at her feet. Surprisingly enough, it was she who broke the silence.

"L-Lady E-Ev-Evans, I – I'm so sorry," she stammered out in a soft voice, jerking into motion as she quickly bent over the tiny, shattered shards again. "I h-hadn't expected you up so s-s-soon, I…I'm s-so sorry…" Fumbling, she began to try to pick up the pieces of glass with her shaking hands.

As Pansy continued to mumble apologies, Hermione's surprised mind unstuck and snapped into action. Whatever had fallen had been completely demolished. If the dark-haired girl kept going at the rate she was, she was never going to be able to gather up everything, and why should she, if Hermione had a wand?

In that split second, Hermione made her decision. She wanted her room to be her refuge, not another stage. She was determined to have one place where she could be herself. If that meant swearing Pansy to a modified secrecy, then that was what Hermione would do. In any case, Pansy would undoubtedly be a good source of information, and information was what Hermione needed more than anything else, at that point.

Calling to mind the most simple restoration charm she knew, she began awkwardly, "All right, now just – just wait a second before you-"

She trailed off as Pansy let out a soft gasp and grasped the fingers of her right hand, dropping the shards she'd managed to collect back to the ground.

"- hurt yourself," Hermione finished weakly. Sighing, she briefly glanced down to make sure her clothes were still somewhat on – it was the ten-sizes-too-small skirt that she was worried about - before sliding off the bed, being careful to avoid the broken glass. "Here – let me see your hand," she said kindly.

Pansy froze as Hermione crouched down across from her. It was painfully evident that she was afraid to comply. Hermione had wondered what kind of 'owner' My had been… and now the answer was more than obvious. The braided girl, who, strangely, looked quite unlike the Pansy Parkinson of her world, must have been living under a none-too-forgiving-or-kind slave driver for the past two years.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said reassuringly, still holding out her hand to Pansy. She also realized that what she said and did from that moment on was going to make a lasting impression, and Hermione intended for it to be a good one. "Let me see your hand. Despite what you may think, I really can fix it."

Reluctantly, slowly, Pansy released her grip on her fingers, revealing an ugly-looking, crimson line across the length of them. Her deep blue eyes never leaving the face of the Head Girl, she silently held out her bleeding hand, jerking once when Hermione gently took it in her own.

Brushing her long, unnaturally smooth bangs out of her eyes, Hermione pointed her wand at the rather nasty gash. She imagined that, if My had been as idiotic as it sounded like she had, Pansy probably had more than a little motivation to be concerned.

"It's alright," she absently murmured in vague reassurance, briefly glancing up at the other girl. Pansy simply gaped at her as if she couldn't decide whether to be frightened or confused, so Hermione sighed and turned back to the task at hand, expertly muttering the same healing charm she'd cast on Malfoy the night before.

One muted orange glow later and Pansy, still pale and partially frozen in place, stared across the void of broken glass at Hermione, the mild distrust in her eyes mingling with astonishment.

Not especially keen on diving into an explanation she knew she would have to give sooner than later, Hermione sent a basic repairing charm at the splintered glass, and a beautiful jewelry box with the letter 'M' engraved in the middle reappeared on the floor before them. "See?" she asked lightly. "The box is whole, and so is your hand. No harm done."

She sent the Pansy a small, encouraging smile, but the girl quickly lowered her disbelieving gaze and again stammered out, "I-I'm so s…sorry, Lady Evans, I – Thank… Thank you – here." Quickly, she stood and grabbed a rather long, familiar-looking roll of parchment off the nearby bureau. "This… This came for you…" After practically shoving it in Hermione's hands, she stepped back and clasped her hands in front of her, bowing her head as if waiting for more instructions.

Hermione couldn't take any more of this. If Pansy was going to act like… well, like a pansy, whenever she spoke, Hermione would go mad. Her mind was quickly drawing a large line between her feelings toward the people of her universe and the people of this one - many of their physical appearances were different enough as it is - and she couldn't stand to see Pansy afraid of her like this. Nor was she especially keen on keeping Pansy as her House-Witch when she, as her owner, could technically 'free' her – SPEW was more than enough proof of that.

Despite this, she was older and wiser now, and she had to be realistic. Any Sovereignty supporters – which seemed to consist of the entire country, and probably most of the students at Hogwarts – would most likely attempt to slaughter Pansy if Hermione freed her and dropped her off at the Hogwarts exit. As much as she hated to admit it, with the general Dark Arts state of affairs, the safest place for Pansy at the moment was probably right where she was. It wasn't as if Hermione was going to start treating her like she was her House-Witch, no matter what My had previously expected from her.

Hardly glancing at the parchment that she knew was her timetable of classes, she pushed herself to her feet. Her tired muscles ached in protest as she sank down on the plum-colored quilt. "Pansy, I need to talk to you," she began slowly, professionally folding her hands in her lap. "Why don't you come over here?"

Pansy stared at her, confusion evident in her gaze, but she eventually nodded and whispered in an eerily subservient voice, "Yes, Lady Evans." Tentatively, she drew up alongside the bed and stood nervously, staring at the ground.

Still mentally trying to come up with a semi-believable/semi-true story, Hermione's perceptive gaze noticed that the knuckles on Pansy's tightly clasped hands were quickly turning a deeper shade of white, and she smiled sympathetically, trying to at least disarm her somewhat. "Sit down," she said genially, patting the bed. "Please."

If anything, Pansy looked even more jumpy at this request, particularly when Hermione added the 'please' bit, but, slowly, she sat down on the other side of the bedpost at the foot of the bed, the mattress letting out a soft _creak_ of protest at the additional weight.

"All right." Hermione took a small breath before deciding that ambiguity would be the easiest way for her to best deliver what she needed to say with as few indications to her real situation as possible. "While I was on the train, I… hit my head. It was a bit of a mind-changing experience for me, and I had a… slight change of heart. So – disregarding everything I've told you in the past – I _don't_ want you to start acting House-Elf-like just because you're… bound to me like you are."

Pansy stared at her for a moment before her brow scrunched in perplexity. "H-House-Elf-like, my Lady?" she echoed hesitantly.

"House-Elf-like," Hermione confirmed with a nod of her head. "I want you to be yourself around me, which means that I don't want you to be afraid to act like yourself. In return, I will… listen to what you have to say and not order you about as if you were a House-Witch."

To say that Pansy's thin face was stunned would be an understatement, but she quickly closed her opened mouth and asked uncertainly, "So, in other words, you… you want me to _say_ what's on my _mind?"_

Probably the last thing any proper House-Wizard owner would do, but Hermione didn't care. She wasn't here to follow wizarding slavery protocol. "Exactly," she told her straightforwardly. "And when I say 'House-Elf-like,' I mean that you don't need to say, "Yes, my Lady,' and 'No, my Lady,' and wait on me hand and foot."

"Isn't that what a House-Witch generally does?" Pansy asked listlessly, staring down at her hands.

"No, a House-Witch generally does what her owner wants them to do," Hermione countered, even though she still hated the words that were coming out of her own mouth. "You're not some robot, you're human, and as such, I want you to act like one. For example, do you normally speak to people like you do me?"

The dark-haired girl lowered her head a bit. "After… After two years of this, Lady Evans, you begin to forget how to normally speak to people," she whispered faintly, flinching slightly and rapidly glancing at Hermione as if she expected some sort of retribution for her words.

_My God… what kind of cruel person __**was**__ My? _

"Listen," Hermione said earnestly, lowering her head until her warm brown gaze met Pansy's apprehensive blue one, "I might have been horrible to you before, but… I've changed my mind about a lot of things. Were it possible, you'd be free by now, but with the situation as it is, you'd probably end up as a target if I did that. In any case, I am truly, _truly_ sorry for everything I've done to you throughout the years."

Tearing her eyes from Hermione's, Pansy sat stiffly, as if not quite sure what to make of what she was hearing, her jaw clenched, still gazing at her lap. Finally, without looking up, she quietly said, "You really expect me to accept that… m-my Lady?" she quickly added tremulously.

Hermione shrugged. "I can't force you to accept it, but I honestly hope you do. It would make things easier for the both of us. Listen, I realize that you're not going to understand the reasons behind most of this, but that's irrelevant," she continued professionally. "The point is…"

Pausing, she mulled indecisively over her next words before deciding that it might be to her advantage to say them. "The point is, my alliances may be changing, and I think it would be very beneficial to the both of us if we began to work together."

"Your alliances may be changing," Pansy repeated doubtfully. Suddenly, energy sprang to her timid voice with surprising temerity. "Your alliances may be changing when you've already _won_ the war? When you've been adopted by the most influential woman of the ruling class? When you've never even cared about anything beyond_ looking pretty?"_

The moment the words exited her mouth, she looked fairly shocked that she'd said them. She shot another fearful glance at Hermione and quickly bowed her head again, but Hermione was wholly impressed.

"It doesn't make sense," she agreed. "No matter which way you look at it, it doesn't, and I know that. The way I'm speaking to you right now doesn't make sense either, does it?" she added shrewdly. "Does My utilize, much less _have_ this sort of vocabulary? She doesn't, does she?"

Pansy stared at her for several seconds, a multitude of decipherable emotions – bafflement, doubtful enlightenment, and then hesitant hope among them – crossing her face until she whispered, "Who - who _are_ you?" Her voice was still diffident, but there was a new, underlying vein of excitement in it as she continued more quickly, "Do I know you from – Are you… under Polyjuice; what -?"

"No," Hermione said quickly, shaking her head before Pansy's imagination could fantasize too many incorrect conclusions. "For now, just take my word that I've changed. Considerably. I also seem to have forgotten a few things along the way, so don't be surprised if I ask some rather basic questions," she added with a wry smile, setting down the unlooked schedule and sticking out her hand. "Call me Hermione. No 'Lady Evans' or 'My' or any of that rubbish. Just Hermione."

Pansy ogled the offered handshake for a substantial amount of time before she took it quite warily. "Pansy… Parkinson?" she said uncertainly, phrasing it as more of a question than a statement, as if she still wasn't certain whether or not My Evans had somehow changed into a different person entirely, in which case a full introduction on her part would be necessary.

For the first time since she'd arrived 'there,' wherever 'there' was, a spontaneous smile settled itself across Hermione's features. "Pansy Parkinson, I know you must think I'm a lunatic right now, but it's really very, _very_ nice to meet you."

A tentative grin tugged halfheartedly at the right side of Pansy' mouth, the expression in her eyes torn between confusion and relief.

Momentarily glancing down, Hermione suddenly remembered timetable Pansy had given her and picked it up, nosing through it. It was sparse, and Hermione vaguely wondered how My was managing to graduate in seven years. _The Dark Arts, Lupin… Muggle Studies, Burbage… Divination, Trelawney; oh __**God **__not that again… Potions, Snape; what __**fun -**_

_Snape! _Her mouth fell open as she gaped down at the paper. _What on earth is __**he**__ doing here?_

"Hermione," Pansy finally repeated as Hermione snapped her mouth shut, her ears trying to decipher Pansy's words while her mind tried to understand the logic to Snape's presence. _"That's _why My stands for?"

Snape had been "bad" in her world… but he had been a spy for the good side… but then he had off and killed Dumbledore to fight for the bad side and hadn't come back to the Order of the Phoenix since… so which side had he really been on? And in this world, was he _still _a spy, this time for the good side?

_Or…_

Hermione blinked at the staggering other possibility: Had he really been, somehow, still on the good side when he'd killed Dumbledore. If so, it would make him _not_ on the good side in this world, not that Hermione could ever see him as being a "good guy" in the full sense of the title…

"Erm… yes," she eventually said distractedly, her voice emerging as half-strangled. After a second, she tore her eyes away from the timetable, and, more specifically, Snape's name. She'd have to think on it extensively later. "Bit unusual, I know," she added in a more normal tone. She pushed the schedule away from her again and glanced at Pansy in surprise. "You didn't know that?"

The ex-Slytherin shrugged, shooting an uncertain glance in her direction. "Well – I mean, I don't _know_ you," she said, nervously twisting her hands in her lap. "Everyone's always called you My, so we always thought it stood for Mya or some exotic…"

Abruptly, a flash of pain crossed her face and she trailed off, her shoulders sagging as she stared expressionlessly at the posh bureau directly across from Hermione's bed. She was thinking about her friends, Hermione realized, and a pang of pain and homesickness that was most likely similar the one that Pansy was feeling jabbed at her own stomach.

"Well, I suppose it could be considered exotic," she said thoughtfully, quickly moving the subject elsewhere simply because she didn't want to linger on the seeming hopelessness of her situation. "It took me two years to teach this one bloke I knew how to say it correctly. Two years of Her-mon-ninny." She laughed weakly as an image of Viktor flashed to mind, then added in a pained voice, "Please, _please_ do not call me My."

Taking a heavy breath as if gathering her nerve, Pansy drew her right leg up under her on the bed and turned her gaze back to Hermione, her braid flipping over her shoulder. "So… basically… you've had a _complete_ turnabout in conscience, name preference, and mannerisms because you hit your head, but you… you won't tell me why?"

"Basically," the Head Girl responded cautiously, glad to hear some of the timidity fading from Pansy's voice. "For example," she started with a sudden eagerness, now that she had someone to talk to, "I essentially think that everyone I've seen so far this year – that would be Harry, Ginevra, and Ro_naaalld" _-Here she said his name in an overdramatic way and rolled her eyes – "are positively _awful,_ and the only reason I'm continuing any association with them at all is solely to keep up appearances."

Pansy was silent for several seconds, bunching and unbunching the rough material of the gray skirt. "You must've off and hit your head something _awful,"_ she finally offered rather hesitantly.

"That I did," Hermione laughed in relief. Heaving a huge sigh, she fell backward onto the bed, grabbed the nearest pillow and stuffed it over her face. "My head hurts," she mumbled, no pun intended. She could cram with the best of them, but no matter her knowledge absorption rate, even she knew that there was such a thing as Information Overload.

"Oh, there's something—" Pansy said suddenly, and Hermione felt her weight shift off the bed. Reluctantly, she lifted the pillow off her face and pushed herself up on one elbow as the other girl pulled open what appeared to be a walk-in closet. "I unpacked all of your things last night, but I didn't know where you wanted this."

She emerged with a dark, vaguely familiar-looking bag… and Hermione's eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

It was the same knapsack that she'd had on her during the final battle.

Even though it had been charmed with a feather-light and the interior had been widened to hold a tremendous amount of magical space, she, Ron, and Harry had drawn lots to see who would have to carry the additional supply bag, and Hermione had won – well, at the time, she'd thought she had lost, but now she was feeling quite the opposite: Elation. Because in it – Good Merlin, if it still held everything the trio had put inside for safekeeping – in it was a gold mine.

"I don't remember you packing it," Pansy was continuing in her soft voice, but she stopped when Hermione practically leapt off the bed and pounced on the knapsack. Without pause or hesitation, she plopped down on the floor in her uniform and unlaced the pack, sticking her hand inside…

Her fingers connected with sleek, cool, water-like material. Briefly, she closed her eyes and sighed in relief, offering a prayer up to whichever gods who had decided to take pity on her before she pulled the object out, her hand plunging back inside the bag again to find the Marauder's Map that she knew was inside.

Jackpot!

"Is that… Is that an Invisibility Cloak?" Pansy suddenly whispered, sounding awed.

_Merlin, almost forgot she was there! Must not do it again! _

Still getting used to having someone else in her bedroom at the crack of dawn, Hermione quickly glanced up to find the blue-eyed girl looking between her and Harry's Cloak, open-mouthed. "Yes," she said, lifting it and holding it up to Pansy. "Have you ever seen one before?"

"Not like this, no," Pansy said, taking it from her and turning the material over in her hands. As she inspected it, Hermione turned her attention back to the bag.

Below the Marauder's Map was the real pot of gold: about half the stock of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, which Fred and George had generously donated for the war effort. Fake wands… Wildfire Whiz-Bangs… Decoy Detonators… Portable Swamps… Headless Hats… Fainting Fancies… Extendable Ears, Shield Gloves and an unbelievable amount more…

All were things that Hermione would have normally condemned at any academic institution, of course, but certainly not in the midst of a war when all the stops had to be pulled out, and certainly not here, in the midst of a seemingly militant Dark Arts state. Not that she would have to put any of them to use, though.

_I mean, it isn't as if I'm going to start another war. _

God no; she was going to find a way home, and she would be finding it soon. If necessary, though, they could definitely be used as instruments for survival, and they were simply a comfort to have around… A reminder that somewhere; whether in this universe or another, there was a Light side, and that Light side had conquered.

Here, however, it was a different story. Setting the bag aside, Hermione briskly pushed herself to her feet and took a breath, turning to a girl she'd hardly known or liked in her world… and who she was most likely going to be seeing a lot of in this one. "Pansy, I need you to explain to me what you can and cannot do under the House-Witch bond."

Pansy jerked in surprise and looked at her abruptly, as if she had momentarily forgotten she was there, but she nodded with only a slight expression of suspicion. She seemed to be ticking points off a list she'd memorized as she said with a sigh, "I can't touch a wand or use magic without your permission, I can only enter and exit a room if a free person escorts me, when you say my name – no matter where I am – I'll reappear where you are instantly, and I can't disobey you – well, I suppose I could, but the bond causes me to feel extreme guilt and – and other things, if I do."

Hermione nodded, but she mentally winced as she realized what she would have to do next. Like Malfoy the night before, she doubted that Pansy would be especially keen on running to the people who had enslaved her and spilling secrets, but for her safety, and Pansy's too, probably, it had to be done.

"Listen," she began slowly, try to choose the most diplomatic words possible, "I – I'm not happy that I have to do this – give you an order – but you need to know, it is_ crucial_ that you don't tell anyone about what you've just seen, or that I'm acting any differently." She lowered her gaze on the taller girl, willing the seriousness of her message to reflect in her expression. "Do you understand?"

Folding the Invisibility Cloak over her arm in more of a preoccupied motion than anything else, Pansy stared at the ground for several seconds before looking back at Hermione and nodding again. "Yes."

"All right." Hermione sighed, unable to shake a deep feeling of guilt at what she'd just done. Distractedly, her eyes wandered to the etched clock along the wall. "Bugger!" she gasped abruptly. "Classes are in two minutes!"

"It doesn't matter." Pansy handed Hermione the Invisibility Cloak and walked back over to the bed. She started to glance at Hermione, as if looking for permission, but she shook her head before she could continue the habit and simply sat down on it. "Last year you never went to your first class on the first day of the week."

Surprised, Hermione momentarily started at Pansy's practically blatant statement of 'it's obvious to me that you have either completely lost your memory or you aren't the person you used to be at all.' Really, though, she'd probably have to be blind and deaf not to, which was why it was so essential that Hermione did everything in her power to act like My around the rest of the world.

"Riiight," she said slowly, folding the Cloak back into the bag and then tapping the backpack with her wand to shrink it.

_Great, Hermione, now she's most likely convinced that you're some My impersonator on Polyjuice, and a right poor one, at that. _

Still, the idea that Pansy realized that My was 'someone else' – though Pansy may have had a vastly different idea of who that 'someone else' was (someone working for whatever Light forces were left, holed up somewhere, perhaps) – didn't bother Hermione as much as she thought it would. At least Pansy seemed to be more willing to give information now that she thought My was an entirely different person – which, for the most part, she was.

_Well then, I suppose that solves some of my problems._ And anyway, speaking of people's problems…

"Do you know," she began slowly as she stuck the now thumb-sized backpack into the pocket of her robe, her mind traveling back to the night before, "Do you know how Ronáld Weasley felt about Draco Malfoy?"

An astonished expression exploded across Pansy's face. After at least fifteen seconds, the dark-haired eighteen-year-old said faintly, "He… hated him. More than he hated most any other person, I should think."

_Well, I suppose that answers the question of why Malfoy's kept in a cage while Pansy's sliding by as more of the hired help. _

Still, the answer surprised her, and Hermione frowned. "Why?" she asked curiously, as Pansy seemed to rein in whatever shock Hermione's initial comment had elicited. "Aside from the Gryffindor-Slytherin enmity, obviously," she added, and tried to hold back a sigh of exasperation – some things would never change, no matter the Universe.

Pansy shrugged. "They would have been rivals even without that, I think, but everything exploded when Draco asked you to the Yule Ball in Fourth Year," she said, her voice distant as if recalling a dream. Hermione's eyebrows flew up in shock as she continued, "Of course, he'd only done it because Blaise had dared him to, and you turned him down rather publicly, but… Weasley never forgot the attempt."

"Oh," Hermione said weakly, and it took everything she had not to cover her face with her hands as she abruptly straightened up and began to pace the room. _Merlin, that's awkward... _Swiftly attempting to digest this new information, she turned on her heel at the closet and walked back over to the main door.

Of all the possible 'histories' that Malfoy and My could have had between them, she had _not_ expected that to be among them!

Still, the Malfoy that Hermione had seen the night before had given her absolutely no indication that he even liked her as a _person,_ so the answer to Pansy's Yule Ball revelation of course had to have been the simplest one: something that involved a dare. Even so, Hermione couldn't help but ask carefully, "You're sure he just… did it on a dare? There wasn't any… _fancying_ going on in there, was there?"

She was clueless as to what she'd do or think if the answer was 'yes.'

Luckily for her, Pansy shook her head, her brow furrowed. _"No…_ No, I definitely wouldn't go as far as to say that. Draco – " she smiled slightly, "Draco could be a downright charming little bugger when he wanted to be, but - no offense to you – he wasn't one to go simply on looks alone for that sort of thing, if you know what I mean…"

"No, he didn't seem like he would be," Hermione murmured in agreement, her mind distant as she thought back to the almost understated maturity that Malfoy had managed to elude even in the state he had been in. But before she could analyze anything further, Pansy quickly stood up as Hermione passed her on her rather winding pacing path between the closet and door.

"Please, will you tell me – is he all right?" Unmistakable, abrupt desperation filled her voice as she caught the sleeve of Hermione's robe. "Is he… Oh God, is he _alive?"_

Simultaneously, a wave of both understanding and unspeakable horror swept through Hermione – it had been _two years_ since the war had ended, and My and Ronáld weren't exactly on cold terms with each other. Hadn't Pansy been able to at least see Malfoy _at all_ in some kind of crossing; hadn't My _told_ her or said something that would have been some indication as to Malfoy's existence?

"He's alive," she finally told her kindly. She sympathetically watched the flurry of emotions that crossed Pansy's gaze as she added carefully, "He was – He was bought by Ronáld and Ginevra Weasley."

Pansy's pale face drained of any of the remaining color it held, if that was even possible. "Sweet Merlin," she whispered faintly. Releasing Hermione's sleeve with an expression of utmost horror on her face, she actually sank back down onto the bed as if she truly needed the support.

Hermione easily imagined how she would have felt if her Harry or Ron had been captured by one of the Slytherins – or, even worse, by Lucius Malfoy or another Death Eater. For Merlin's sake, _she_ had really only been a second's breath away from experiencing the same horror that Pansy currently was. In her world, If Voldemort had lived, and Harry had died, then she very well could have been in Pansy's exact position, without knowing what had happened to Ron or her parents or any of her friends…

She sighed heavily. "Right."

**A/N:** Haha, I am so glad you all like what I've done with this premise! There's a lot of different ways one could take it, so I'm glad my approach seems to be working so far. I know this chapter is kind of stagnant, but it's really necessary I establish a lot of the main characters and their general background history fairly early… but the action should be coming really soon. Plus more Draco. Thank you so much for your great reviews!

I'd also like to thank Flora hiemis for making a gorgeous banner for the story… it can be found at: http// www. i22.photobucket. com/albums/b349 /Ravenclawgirl/reverseban .jpg

Reviews make my day! 

Cheers all.

LM


	7. The Map

**The Map**

**Tuesday, August 29**

**3:02 P.M.**

After an hour and a half of suffering through nearly suffocating, incense-choked air, fawning teenagers, and wispy, ambiguous predictions of missing pets and dying relatives, Hermione was nearly at her academic tolerance breaking point: the atmosphere around her made her feel as if she was mentally going _backward._

Of course, the first class that she was attending in this world _had _to be the only one that she truly detested in her world, or any other one, for that matter.

Oddly enough, even though Seventh and Eighth Year Divination was, for the most part, an elective, the entire class was absolutely packed with boys and girls alike. Unfortunately, those numbers included Harry, Ronáld, and Ginevra, which meant that Hermione had to be on her "My" toes at almost every second. She had managed to fend off most conversation by feigning a detached air, but she had no idea how much longer she could go on without saying _something_ that could arise suspicion.

Shockingly, neither Harry nor Ronáld was poking fun at the class, which was very uncharacteristic of the Harry and Ron she knew and loved. While Harry was idly swirling the leaves in his cup and looking relatively indifferent, Ronáld and Ginevra, along with most of the other students, seemed to be hanging on to Trelawney's every word as the misty-eyed woman figuratively floated about helping particularly inept students interpret their tea leaves.

Rolling her eyes, Hermione peered back down at her unintelligible mess of tea leaves and decided to say that they looked like a shopping bag, if questioned.

One with the Inner Eye, she was not. And anyway, the answer sounded very My-like.

Making sure to keep a little smirk on her face at all times, an expression she had seen My wear in several more Yearbook pictures in which she was not the central focus of the photograph, she idly let her mind wander back to her first encounter with Pansy that morning. Hermione thought she had made progress with her, or, at least, she hoped she did. The very idea of a House-Witch or Wizard absolutely disgusted her, and she had no intention of making Pansy continue to live like one, as long as she could convince _her _of that.

Then to see Snape's name on her timetable! The fact that the man was still a professor at Hogwarts astounded her. The Dumbledore of her world's killer still on the Dark side, even though he had been evil in her world? Shouldn't that fact have made him a Light supporter in this Universe, and therefore technically either dead, in Azkaban, or a House-Wizard? Or did her assumption that good in one world would equal bad in the other, or vice versa, somehow not apply to everyone?

And Draco Malfoy asking _her_ to the Yule Ball, even if it was on a dare?

Merlin, this was a messed-up world -

"You know, I'd say that Trelawney was acting like a crazy old bat, if I didn't know for a fact that she wasn't one," she suddenly overheard Ronáld mutter none-too-quietly to Harry, who simply stonily nodded his head once in agreement. "All these blasted predictions get as boring as a Centaur hunt with _Filch_ if they aren't about you. If she doesn't have a vision _now, _I'm going to get a bit shirty. Maybe even furious; I haven't decided yet."

At both his spoiled and dangerously unstable outburst, Hermione couldn't help but sadly stare at Ronáld's slicked-back head, but she quickly forced herself to think about anything other than how different her best friend was in this world; to mentally divide her mental perception of him and Ron into two entirely different people … as if Ron had an evil twin. Yes, that was it. His evil twin Ronáld.

_And a Trelawney with constantly accurate visions? Yeah, right, _she scoffed about his original statement, though she did have to wonder why the Divination teacher visibly had so many disciples, Ronáld included. Maybe _this _Trelawney was a bit more precise with her predictions than her other world counterpart? And if she was…

Well, Hermione could only hope that Trelawney's visions regarding herself would be very clouded indeed.

"Shame she doesn't get one _every_ day," she breathed disappointedly, deciding to risk conversation in order to find out how frequent these 'visions' were.

"A right shame," Ronáld moodily agreed in what almost sounded to be a mockery of her words, then smirked and leaned toward her suggestively, struck by an all-too-sudden change of disposition. "I bet I know what _your_ leaves say, pet."

_Want to put money on that?_

Hermione gritted her teeth; this was the second time since lunch he had come onto her, and the first time had been without words. To her utmost loathing, she knew she'd have to put up with it if she wanted to get out back to her world in one piece, if at all. "And what is that, Ronáld?" she forced herself to ask with a too-sweet smile, holding out her cup out to him.

The redhead studied it for a minute, then leered in the same suggestive manner he had on the train. Naturally, alarm bells began ringing inside Hermione's head as he breathed in a husky manner that he must have thought was attractive, "Since it so obviously looks like a bed, it's letting you know that-" he lowered his voice dramatically, "- 'tonight at twelve, you and the best-looking wizard in this building, your Head Girl-sized bedroom…' "

She stiffened like a board when she felt a hand that was not hers slide under her already far-too-short uniform skirt and run up and down her bare leg. Hardly masking a scowl, Hermione reached under the table, grabbed his hand, and practically threw it off her, all the while keeping the pleasant smile on her face.

"Oh, Ronáld, don't be _silly!"_ she exclaimed, ignoring his pleading baby face. Slapping his hand away under the table as it again tried to move back to where it had no right being, she tilted her cup toward her as if to look at it again and then smiled at him innocently. _"I _think it looks like a purse. In the future, I will either be shopping for new _clothes_ or a new _man."_

_Hopefully that slightly-witty comeback isn't too far above My's head._

Luckily, Ginevra snickered as if My's insults of Ronáld were common occurrences - _Which will become even more commonplace,_ Hermione thought vehemently - while several Gryffindor and Hufflepuff girls nearby giggled at her words. As if her threat was nothing but a joke to him, however, Ronáld simply rolled his eyes and gave her an annoyed expression. "Now, now, no need to get all _hissy,_ pet – "

"And now, we come to Lady Evans," Trelawney's wispy voice suddenly breathed behind her. "Let me see your teacup, my beauty…"

For once, Hermione was actually relieved, but also more than slightly nervous, to hear the professor. Of course, she had half a mind to continue her avowed skepticism of the rubbish that others called Divination, but now there was too much at stake for her to take anything here less than seriously. If Trelawney was a true Seer – or even a person whose word was trusted and well-respected… if she even _thought _that she saw something, anythingthat might throw suspicion onto Hermione…

The Head Girl swallowed hard, forcing herself not to think of the results.

Completely ignoring Ronáld, she forced an airy smile to her face and nonchalantly held the cup toward the batty-looking woman who was hovering over her shoulder. _Dear __**God, **__please do not let her have a vision around me, please do not let her have a vision around me, please, please…._

Trelawney peered inside the porcelain for a minute. "Your leaves whisper of an exchange in your future," she said in a hushed voice, her eyes scrutinizing the cup's bottom as she rotated it in her hands. "Tonight… Yes, tonight… The switch _must_ begin and end tonight. _Use_ _your_ _Inner Eye!_ Do you See, my beauty?"

_Oh thank Merlin._

Still the same crazy old bat, as Ronáld would say.

Hermione let out a breath, torn between relief and scorn, but she froze in the process of rolling her eyes at Trelawney's tosh when she saw that Ronáld and the rest of the class were leaning toward herself and the professor as if truly enraptured by the display.

In a heartbeat, the adrenaline and instincts that had kept her undetected since the moment she had somehow fallen into the Hogwarts Express of Universe B swallowed all of her pride.

Swiftly channeling a Universe A memory of Lavender and Parvati during the few Divination classes she had taken, Hermione blinked and then masked her face into a mixture of confusion and awe, nodding as seriously as she could. "Oooo, I _do!" _she breathed in a mixture between an excited squeal and a breathy purr, gesturing at the cup. "That part - and that part there – They both make up an 'X,' for _ex_change! I can See it!"

"My can _See!" _Lavender Brown echoed in an excited whisper from the table behind her.

This time, Hermione couldn't help but roll her eyes slightly as Trelawney nodded in equal seriousness and gave her a rare half-smile. Briefly, she set her hand on Hermione's shoulder. "Well done, my dear. Well done," she breathed before moving on to a smirking Ronáld.

Hermione noticed Harry unhesitatingly roll his eyes at the same time that Ginevra glanced up from a brief examination of her nails and bestowed her with a short, decidedly fake smile. "Oh yes, _well done,_ My," she snapped in a snide imitation of Trelawney. "Everyoneknows that you want to be _just_ like her."

"Oh, why, thank you, Ginevra! You haven't the slightest idea of how very _much _that means to me," Hermione simply replied with a bright smile. In response, Ginevra sniffed snottily and turned back to Trelawney's prediction for Ronáld. Hermione couldn't help but smirk slightly and shake her head -

That was the moment she first saw Harry slip a thin sheet of parchment out of his pocket on the side opposite the one to which Ginevra was clinging, as if to prevent her from looking it. Curiosity overtook Hermione as he tapped it with his wand and nonchalantly glanced down at it, and she couldn't help but casually tilt her head at just the right angle…

_Oh bugger._

Hermione sucked in a quick breath as the object of Harry musings came into full visibility.

_**That**__ is going to be a problem. _

**6:15 P.M.**

"D'you see my hair, My? Doesn't it look different? Last week I had my Style Witch fix it _just_ like yours!"

"What was it like to spend the _entire_ summer with the son of Lily Evans? He's just so cold and dark and _delicious, _My… Have you gotten a good look of him – you know – without anything on?"

"_Shut it,_ Brown! Harry belongs to _me!"_

"My, are the papers true? Did you really have an affair with Sirius Black after the Awards Ceremony?"

"We aren't bothering you, are we?"

_Tonight… Yes, tonight… The switch __**must**__ begin and end tonight… _

The breathy undertones of a hovering Professor Trelawney still ringing painfully in her ears, Hermione winced and finally tuned back into the dinner conversation.

"Yes! Now let me eat in peace!" she snapped at the last question she had heard, shooting Parvati Patel, Lavender Brown, Ginevra Weasley, and three girls in Ginevra's year that she didn't know a glare. When all the girls simply continued to gaze at her with awestruck eyes - except for Ginevra, who simply returned to her meal with a huff - Hermione wondered with a bit of belated alarm as to what else, exactly, she had answered 'yes' to.

_Great going, Hermione, let's just personally fuel more reports of your own promiscuity,_ she thought sarcastically.

Holding back a tired groan, she turned back to her meal without another glance at the gaggle of girls, praying they would simply _take_ a _hint._ Not only did she not want to talk about make-up, gossip, boys, and sex – the only topics she had heard out of their mouths the entire day – she didn't want to risk anything by speaking more than she had to.

Though a few of the girls looked decidedly disappointed, Hermione watched out of the corner of her eye as they all turned back to their little whispering group.

_Thank God. Alone at last._

And when she thought 'alone,' she meant it. Women were turning out to be the trophies rather than the sidekicks in this world, which would explain why the Seventh and Eight Year boys were sitting in a pack down at the opposite end of the Gryffindor table. Despite the obvious gains it had made promoting Muggle-born rights and equality, not only was this world one in which Dark Magic was of utmost importance, it was also highly chauvinistic and materialistic, leagues worse than anything she had encountered in Universe A.

Minutes before, Hermione had irately discovered that the boys would come to 'collect their women' when they were ready to leave the lunch table.

Resisting the exceedingly tempting urge to rub her temples, she forced herself to focus back on the problem at hand: _This_ Universe's Marauder's Map.

Of course, since its appearance in the Divination attic, Harry hadn't offered to show it to either Ginevra or herself, though she wasn't entirely sure he had even showed it to Ronáld. But if she was going to be sneaking around the library after hours, researching ways to get home, she couldn't exactly let them know that she was there, could she? After all, Hermione was getting the sense that the odds of hearing 'My' and 'studying' together in the same sentence were close to zero.

Anxiously gnawing on the inside of her cheek, Hermione glanced back over toward the front of the Great Hall and just managed to catch a glimpse of Harry's messily curled raven-colored hair as he briefly bent down over his plate.

She had to get that Map.

**6:22 P.M.**

Harry Evans sullenly stared at his plate, relieved to have that blasted redhead away from him for one bleeding second of his waking hours. He only tolerated her presence because he had no other choice. He only spoke to her brother because his mother expected him to. He never spoke to Thomas, Finnegan, or Longbottom.

Idly, he tuned back into Ronáld's voice beside him -

"-nevra was behind most of that, I'll admit - a bit upset holiday was over, I think - but tonight – a free-for-all. The mongrel's been asking for it the entire _summer-"_

- and tuned back out just as quickly, focusing his energy on staring blankly at the back of the head of a blonde Ravenclaw sitting at the next table over. A minute, or maybe five passed in this manner, but an unmistakable voice suddenly cut through his bitter haze of unnamable thoughts and brought his attention back to reality with a mere two words.

"Oh, _Ronáld…"_

Harry's shoulders instantly tensed. Clenching his jaw, he shifted his head to the left just slightly, unnoticeably, almost – just in time to see the woman he had for two and a half years been truly loath to call his sister wrap her arms around Weasley from behind.

_So much for 'Oh, I'm __**so **__hard to get, Ronáld,' the conniving little bint, _he thought acerbically as all conversation between Longbottom, Thomas, and Finnegan abruptly halted, Longbottom and Thomas coughing loudly.

A both smug and possessive smirk broke out across Ronáld's face, which My only fueled more as she leaned down, bringing her lips close to his ear. "I just wanted to tell you I'm leaving now, so you don't have to come looking for me later," she whispered in a low enough tone that Harry was probably the only other person close enough to hear.

He didn't need to look at Weasley to know that an excited gleam had jumped to the redhead's eye. "Looking for a spot of company, are you, pet?" He set down his utensils and threw his napkin down on the table. "Well then, I will be only _too_ happy to oblige-"

"Oh, not now, Ronáld," My interrupted in her disgustingly saucy voice, "I plan on taking a long, hot bath – _alone,"_ Harry was enormously surprised to hear her add, even if it was with a giggle.

Weasley made a slight moan of protest as she turned. "Oh, come _on,_ pet!" he exclaimed, catching her hand and pulling her back toward him. Harry felt no brotherly protection arise in him at the sight as Weasley whined, "It's been _two bloody days!"_

"Bloody hell, wrapped right around her sexy little finger, he is," Thomas muttered, shaking his head.

"And you're saying you wouldn't be wrapped around her sexy little finger, if you were in his position," Finnegan muttered back with a small smirk, to which Harry could only sit and feel his blood start to boil as My made more verbal foreplay with Ronáld and even the other boys in his House with the clear intent of leaving them all with their mouths open and drooling-

But when she purposely bumped into his own shoulder, hard, Harry had reached his boiling point and beyond. Even though he had partially expected something like it to happen, he swiveled on the bench, barely holding back the same electric shock of anger and aversion he felt whenever My so much as looked at him.

"Watch it, you _cow!"_ he hissed furiously.

Infuriatingly, she simply batted long eyelashes at him. "Oh, so sorry, _brother."_

Harry was positive he saw a tiny grin tugging at her lips a second before she turned on her heel, and he scowled fiercely at her back until she had sashayed out of the Great Hall entirely.

For years, he had always encouraged the world to believe that he cared for no one except himself and was indifferent to everything and everyone else, but words could not begin to describe how much Harry Evans _hated_ the newest addition to his family. For the innocent, dumb blonde act that she had always put on, he knew all too well that she had some kind of brain in her head. Why no one else thought she did, he had no idea.

"You never did tell me what my little My-pet ever did to you, Evans," Weasley said in an imperialistic manner that left no room for avoidance, leaning back in the bench and lacing his hands behind his head as he expectantly glanced over at Harry.

Longbottom laughed. "No shit, Evans; you've got the goods! All I had to play with over the holidays was that Bulstrode twitch of a House-Witch. If My Granger suddenly became my sister and lived in the same house I did, you'd bloody well bet that she and I'd already be having a bit of… fun…" he suggestively trailed off as Ronáld gave him a venomous glare.

Harry simply set his cold gaze on Longbottom until the boy chuckled uncomfortably and looked away. Then he glanced at Weasley. "It's personal," he said shortly. Shoveling one last forkful of steak and kidney pie into his mouth, he stood up and stalked away from table without another word to any of them, his well-trained ears easily blocking out Ginevra's whingings of "Harry, darling, _where_ are you running off to _without_ me?"

Bloody _hell,_ he needed to go flying.

6:28 P.M.

As soon as she emerged from the Great Hall, Hermione pasted a snooty expression on her face, and, without bothering to acknowledge the few other students entering and exiting the Hall, she quickly stepped off into a dim, lesser used corridor. When she was safely out of view of any curious eyes, she slipped her hand deep into the right pocket of her brand-name robes.

Her fingers connected with the smooth but worn parchment of Universe B's Marauders' Map.

A relieved smile slipped across her face, and she marveled, with some incredulity, at the relative ease of it all. She had discretely utilized several rather handy pick-pocketing charms that Mundungus Fletcher had delighted in teaching her during the relatively short time he'd stayed at the same make-shift Light shelter as the Golden Trio had during the previous year.

Harry had been so busy cursing her with his eyes that he hadn't even noticed that anything was amiss.

For a brief moment, her stomach twisted painfully at the memory, but she shoved the sensation out of her mind. For as much as every glare, every spiteful word truly hurt her now, she was going to have to get used to Harry's hatred, just as she would have to get used to Ronáld's dark perverseness. After all, they weren't even the people that Hermione truly liked; they weren't the _real _Harry and Ron.

_Anyway, it'll only be for a little while longer_, she comforted herself, pulling the Map completely from her pocket. _Just until you find a way back, and you will. Aren't you supposed to be the smartest witch of your age? You can figure out anything you set your mind to. You'll be back with the Harry and Ron that you love within the week. A month, at worst._

Yes, just a month, and she would be back in a Universe where she and so many like her had fought for the greater good and had won. Just a month, and she would be safe…

For some reason, instead of reassuring her, the words caused her heart to tighten in her chest. Before she could stop them, a handful of graphic memories from the past twenty-four hours flashed before her eyes:

The excitement and hope in Pansy Parkinson's expression when Hermione had earlier that day all but told her that she wasn't really 'My,' but someone whose alliances lay with the Light;_ "Who - who __are__ you?" Her voice was still diffident, but there was a new, underlying vein of excitement in it as she continued more quickly, "Do I know you from – Are you… under Polyjuice; what-?"…_

The ghastly state in which she'd found Draco Malfoy; _"Come for a… a bit more – fun - at my expense, have you?" he rasped quietly, his broken speech either hoarse with disuse or over-use. As if, even though he had hardly made a sound during the Crutiatus, somewhere, sometime in the relatively recent past, he'd been screaming for hours..._

Shaking off an unsettling sense of uneasiness and something inexpressible curling at the pit of her stomach, Hermione quickly forced herself to focus back on the Map. She wasn't certain of how much time she had to work with, but she knew it wasn't much. Harry seemed to use the Map often, and she had no idea whether there were any seriously noticeable difference between this one and Universe A's Marauders' Map, which she had left with him.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she muttered, tapping the parchment with her wand. For a moment, she simply held her breath, praying that the password was still the same… and let out the same breath in relief when inky lines spread from her wand to the parchment, carefully tracing the blueprints of the castle.

"-and then Lupin _pounded _him! That is one hell of a Dark Arts teacher, I tell you!"

Unexpectedly, a burst of leisurely chatter exploded nearby, and Hermione jerked in both surprise and alarm. Swiftly, she shoved the Map under one arm, safely out of obvious sight, and casually leaned her back against the corridor wall, tossing her unnaturally smooth hair over her shoulder (or, at least, unnatural to her) and idly studying long, manicured nails as a group of older Hufflepuffs walked by.

Some that Hermione vaguely recognized as a year or two younger than herself openly gaped at her, as if they had just been given the rare opportunity to gaze upon some distant pop star. Ernie Macmillan's eyes, however, freely roved down her body from head to toe, but she clenched her jaw and forced herself to remain indifferent. Susan Bones nodded at her with a relatively cool expression, and Hermione simply arched one eyebrow in reply, her expression detached but her heart pounding.

She hoped it wasn't too cold of a brush-off.

Apparently, it wasn't, because the Hufflepuffs returned to whatever heated conversation they'd been having about the Dark Arts and continued on their way without any perceptible suspicion.

_Merlin, whatever happened to the 'just, patient, and kindhearted Hufflepuffs?' _

The knots in her stomach slowly unclenched as their voices faded. _And where is Harry's Invisibility Cloak when I need it? _she thought tiredly, slouching partway down the wall. It was her first full day here, _only _her first day, and she was already on the edge of exhaustion from the constant necessity to keep her senses and her mind on the highest alert -

_**Invisibility.**_

Hermione straightened up, the mists of sleep that had been clouding her senses swiftly dispersing as her mind snapped to attention. Of course! It had only been yesterday night that she had actually _managed _to performone of the most difficult charms in existence. How had she forgotten about that?

Surreptitiously glancing around to ensure she was indeed again alone, she carefully folded the Map along an already established crease and temporarily placed it back in her pocket. Feeling an almost childish mix of exhilaration at her new capability and anxiety that she wouldn't be able to repeat it again, she took her wand from her pocket and purposefully aimed it at herself.

_**OCCAECO!**_

She paused expectantly at the end of the thought. But instead of the eerie tingling that she had experienced the first time she'd completed the spell, and hoped to experience again, as she assumed that it was an indication of spell completion, Hermione felt… nothing.

Utter disappointment flooded her. Frowning, she shook her head, resiliently clearing her mind. The night before hadn't been a fluke… it _hadn't _been! "All right. I can do this," she muttered. She took a determined breath and again placed the tip of her wand on her arm. Furrowing her brow in concentration, she closed her eyes and thought of only one word. _OCCAECO… Occaeco, Occaeco, OCCAECO!_

Nothing happened. No tingly feeling, no surge of magic. No nothing.

_Oh bloody… Damn!_

She let out a hiss of frustration and nearly kicked the wall behind her, gripped by an overwhelming wave of frustration.

Apparently, she would be needing Harry's Invisibility Cloak after all – or, while she was here, she supposed it would be easier if she thought of it as _her _Invisibility Cloak, as the Harry of this Universe probably had one as well.

Sighing heavily, Hermione lightly banged her head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, using logic to squash her disappointment as best as she could. She had been under an immense amount of pressure the night before. To her, it had literally been a life and death situation. Perhaps, theoretically, those were the conditions that she needed to have and to feelin orderto produce the charm again.

Anyway, that was only time when it would really matter, right?

_Right._

Hermione nodded affirmatively and started off down the corridor toward the Head dorms. She could complete an Invisibility charm. She could. She'd only be able to use it on… special occasions.

Briefly, she closed her eyes, then pulled the Marauders' Map of this Universe from her pocket and began to nose through it in an attempt to distract herself from the rather disturbing fact that the Invisibility Charm had not worked, especially when she knew that it _had, _just yesterday.

The year before, she had helped 'her' Harry make a few adjustments to the Marauders' Map – mostly to allow it to 'see through' several new concealment enchantments that had been developed during the war and therefore hadn't been incorporated into the Map's original detection capabilities, like Polyjuice Potion had, for example.

Granted, it had taken even her a little more than a week to break through the admittedly ingenious framework, but she _had_ gotten through, and if this Map was made anywhere near the same way, then jamming it however she wanted should be a snap.

She would have to jam it well, however, considering the fact that most, if not all, of the original creators of said Map were probably still alive.

Absently, she turned down a more commonly used hallway. She couldn't help but wince at the painfully loud click of her high-heeled shoes on the stone floor. Hermione had always considered any shoe with a heel higher than a millimeter to be utterly useless and perfectly impractical for daily usage, but they were the only kind of footwear that My owned… other than sheepskin slippers and fluffy white "snow boots" that she doubted could withstand one drop of water.

_Blasted – sodding – stupid high-heeled shoes! _

Irately, she drew her wand and shot a Muffling Charm at the ridiculous things, then turned back to the Mauraders' Map. Keeping her ears tuned for any stray noises that could alert her to the fact that she was being followed, or at least about to run into another student, she scanned it keenly. Off the top of her head, she was able to pick out a few major differences. Most noticeably, this Map showed a large addition to the Hogwarts grounds: a rectangular building boldly labeled '**The Hangar'** bordering the Forbidden Forest and Hagrid's hut.

Hermione eyed it curiously, briefly wondering as to its use, then flipped through the various folds of the parchment until she was looking at the lesser used area of the castle in which she had been the night before, her gaze searching out any additional secret passages off the corridor that she remembered the Vampire statue to be.

Interestingly enough, however, the Map showed nothing in a place where she knew there _must_ have been something - as if whatever was beneath the hole under the Vampire statue had been constructed after the Map had been made. But, oddly enough, a small, familiar tag was hovering above the area where, theoretically, a passage or room _should _have been, showing that someone was there at that very moment.

Frowning briefly in the dim light of the fading day that was shining through the few windows lining the hallway, Hermione swerved, coming up below a lighted torch beside the portrait hole to the dorm belonging to the Heads of the Student Body. As she did, the flickering firelight spilled across the paper, instantly making clear the previously unintelligible words.

Hermione's legs stopped working so suddenly, she almost fell over. She hardly noticed; she didn't care. She could only gape at the name before her.

The person tagged was Lucius Malfoy.

Her mouth dropped open, and she blinked rapidly. But… that wasn't possible. Lucius Malfoy was supposed to be dead!

Doubting her own eyesight, she suspiciously peered at the letters once more, then whipped out her wand and muttered, "Lumos!" for additional illumination, bringing the Map close to her face.

Yes, the label most definitely read **Lucius Malfoy. **

But… how? According to the history books she had read only the night before, Lucius Malfoy had 'mysteriously vanished' in the early eighties, in the midst of playing a major role in a Conservative-supported rebellion.

But, for one of the few times in her life, experience spoke louder than literature. The Marauders' Map had never made an error. It hadn't even been wrong when the younger Barty Crouch had been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody.

Why should she put complete faith in a book of history most likely written by this Dark government called the Sovereignty?

She knew the Map. Even more importantly, in this upside-down world where her best friends had suddenly become her enemies and she hadn't the slightest of _what _her old enemies were to her now, she _trusted _the Map.

Now, the real question was, why did the world believe Lucius Malfoy was dead, while he was still very much alive and staying in an otherwise unknown secret passage – room? – in Hogwarts?

The answer was so logical that it hardly required any thinking at all. _Of course. _If the Dark had captured Malfoy years ago rather than killed him, keeping him alive for the information that he most likely held would have been the most intelligent thing they could have done -

"Oh! My la – Hermione," Pansy's voice abruptly emerged from in front of her, still sounding wary at addressing her with anything less than a formal title. "He – Hello?"

Startled, Hermione looked up swiftly, only to find herself standing inside the door to her Head Girl room, and Pansy looking up at her from her place seated cross-legged on the soft, thick maroon rug at the foot of the bed. Partially wondering as to just how she had gotten from the portrait hole to her room, Hermione fought to shake herself from jumping to too many conclusions regarding her recent discovery.

"Hi, Pansy," she said, probably too brightly. In the year and a half since she'd actually attended boarding school, she had partially forgotten what it meant to share a room with someone else – and it wasn't 'privacy.' "Were you able to, erm, find something to do after I left?"

Pansy shrugged and held up what appeared to be a fashion magazine, probably one of the only semi-books that My possessed. "Beauty secrets – at least there's no politics involved there," she said weakly. She was still regarding Hermione guardedly, however, and Hermione guessed she was worried that what open conversation had transpired between them that morning had been some sort of extraordinary fluke. "Do you – Do you need me to do - ?"

She started to stand, but Hermione waved her hand in a 'stay' motion. "No. No, really, it's fine. Everything we talked about this morning still stands, and believe me, it won't be changing any time soon," she added, another surge of disgust at the Sovereignty's cruel system flooding through her. "You most certainlydo _not_ have to wait on me, or on anyone else who comes in here. Anyway, I've got, erm… homework," she finished lamely, holding up the Map as if to give proof.

Pansy's eyebrows flew up, but she didn't complain; in fact, she seemed rather astonished. "Well… Alright," she said tentatively, nodding. It could have been Hermione's imagination, but the other girl's deep blue eyes seemed to linger for a rather unnaturally long moment at the Marauders' Map before she returned her focus to the magazine.

After a moment, she shook her head. She was just being paranoid. Still… Speaking of the Marauders' Map… "Pansy," she said abruptly, still gazing distantly at the aged parchment. "Do you… know what happened to Draco Malfoy's father?"

The dark-haired girl started and looked back up at Hermione so quickly that her long braid whipped against the front board of the bed with a small thump, her nervous expression conveying a fear that Hermione may have somehow suddenly regressed back to her My self. That question clearly had not been what she had been expecting. "I – erm – Well, don't you?" she asked evasively.

Really, all Hermione wanted was another source to verify the same story that had been in A Brief History of the Modern Wizarding World, 1945- 1997, just to ensure that the book's information was indeed true and wasn't a historical Joke Book that had purposefully been penned in imitation of serious authors, or the like.

Or maybe she had just been spending too much time around Fred and George, in her world.

Sinking down on the edge of the bed, she willingly kicked off the much-hated high-heeled shoes as she looked back at Pansy. "I forgot."

Mentally, she groaned at her excuse. _Oh, Hermione, why don't you just stop trying already? She already knows that there's no comprehensible way you can still be My._

Pansy twisted slightly in her sitting position on the carpet, surveying Hermione carefully. "He disappeared when Draco was two," she said after a moment. "That's all I really know. Draco and his mum never really talked about him, though you – err… though Gryffindors used to taunt him about it a rather lot," she finished slowly, as if unsure whether or not she should refer to the My she had always known as a completely different person. Uncertainty abruptly flickered in her eyes. "Oh, erm – you don't… mind me mentioning Draco, do you?"

Hermione shook her head in vigorous disagreement, her voice raising in anger the longer she continued to speak._ "Merlin,_ no. You can say whatever you want about whoever you want whenever you want. Never forget that. You are _not_ a House-Witch to me anymore… No one should be forced to be anything even _remotely_ like that—"

_Whoa, calm down, Hermione. This is not the time for a SPEW-like tirade. _

She paused, inhaling a slow, calming breath. "And thanks – For telling me, about Draco's father," she added after she felt significantly composed again. She frowned thoughtfully at the Map, trying to connect any missing dots. "Hm."

Pansy momentarily searched Hermione's brooding face, the latter still tight with lingering anger, then bit her lip, hesitating. "Why?" she asked quietly.

Hermione held back a tired yawn, glancing back over the edge of the bed. "You mean… Why did I ask about Lucius Malfoy?"

When Pansy nodded, she sighed. _Wonderful… Do I tell her? _

She hated to lie, but she hardly had any idea of what was going on herself, both regarding this new Lucius Malfoy situation and everything else. On top of that, telling the truth would require a very long and winding explanation of the Marauders' Map, something that she was just too tired to do at the moment. Dismissively, she waved her hand. "It's really nothing. I overhead someone mention the name, earlier, and I was just curious."

"Oh." Pansy's Mediterranean blue eyes, gleaming in a curiously unreadable fashion, studied Hermione for a second more before she returned her attention to the magazine. Hermione hadn't the slightest idea of whether or not Pansy believed her, but, at that point, she had too much to do to really worry about it. Rolling over until she was fully sprawled across her bed, she pulled the Map in front of her and gazed once more at the name **Lucius Malfoy**.

So many things were happening so suddenly; she had so much to worry about and focus on at the same time that she wasn't even sure where this revelation ranked on her priority list, or if it should even _be _on her priority list. After all, if Lucius Malfoy was indeed in Hogwarts Castle, then he must have been guarded well. It had been obvious that whomever or whatever was inside the Vampire passage was very important to the woman she had seen with McGonagall. And, regardless of all of that…

Would she be willing to risk her cover and even her life to find out?

After all, what would she even do if she _did _discover that Lucius Malfoy was being detained in a hole under a Vampire statue at Hogwarts? Not a single day had passed in her world that she hadn't known the man to be pure evil. Sure, things _seemed_ to be completely reversed here, but how could she really be assured that he _was _indeed good? She'd thought that Severus Snape had been evil in her world, too, and here he was in this world, still on the side of evil –

_Hermione! Dear Merlin, __**stop**__ over-analyzing this situation! You don't even know for certain that it's him!_

Shaking her head, Hermione tore her gaze away from that area of the Marauders' Map and briefly closed her eyes, burying her face into the downy burgundy comforter covering her bed. The desire to nod off was too much, however, and she reluctantly lifted her head, blearily forcing her eyes back open before she could succumb to the temptation.

She would worry about Lucius Malfoy later. She'd have no means of doing anything for him or anyone else if she didn't help herself now. If Harry had full operational use of the Marauders' Map, she would have no way of researching in the library explanations of what had happened to her to bring her here, as well as what might be necessary to take her back. That meant that the Map had to go.

Shrugging off her robe so she was simply left in her uniform skirt and shirt, she spent the next two and a half hours carefully working her way through the now-familiar, delicate magical structure of the Map. When she'd finally cracked it, she debated for several minutes on the most appropriate message to display once she'd completely disabled it, particularly because there was always the off chance that Harry would run to his – _their _– father and ask for help.

Finally, Hermione settled on what she deemed the most cautious manner of approach.

'_Messrs. Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs regretfully wish to inform you that the Marauders' Map will be closed for repairs, updates, and renovations for an indefinite amount of time. Have no fear, however; we __**will **__reopen as soon as all improvements are finished! Do not let this discourage you from cracking on in your dodgy and preferably illicit activities – Remember, pranksters will always prevail no matter the odds that may be thrown against them!_

_Until an indefinite amount of time, we remain, _

_Your Fellow Mischief Makers_

_P.S. – To those particularly insightful individuals who may be privy to the identity of aforementioned Messrs., d__o not bother to seek out aid from one of them. This cycle is necessarily for the Marauders' Map's health, and, as we have spent valuable time integrating it into the Map's system, we will not cut the process short simply because you haven't got a whit of patience.'_

Smiling to herself, Hermione carefully re-folded the map and tucked it into her robe's pocket. Letting out a small sigh of relief that she'd at least accomplished _something _productive, she rolled onto her side, gratefully taking the infrequent moment of laziness to thoughtfully gaze around the Head Girl dormitory. It really was massive, for private housing, with loads of floor space and wall space despite the many bookcases and bureaus.

Yet… there was no extra bed.

Furrowing her brow, Hermione crawled commando-style to the edge of the bed and poked her head out over it, fairly startling Pansy enough for the girl to jump and look up at her in surprise. Hermione gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry to keep shocking you, but I have another question. Where – Where do you _sleep?"_ she asked warily, partially afraid of the answer that she might receive.

When Pansy's face fell, a slight flush rising to her pale cheeks, Hermione knew. It was just what she had been afraid of. And, suddenly, the aversion that had steadily been building up inside her throughout the day, the utter revulsion for this world and the part that she was being forced to play in it, began to burst free from the careful dam in which it had been contained.

"I have to sleep in the… the slave hold, in the dungeons," Pansy finally answered quickly, carefully staring down at the magazine in her lap. "It's not as bad as it sounds," she began half-heartedly as scorching anger crossed Hermione's face, but Hermione cut her off before she could start making excuses for the inhuman way in which she'd been treated.

"Rubbish! From this night on, you're sleeping right here," she snapped, though her anger wasn't directed at Pansy. Her eyes were already scoping out the large room for the best place to put an extra cot. "Just let me know who I have to tell, and _oh,_ I will – tell them off, anyway," she muttered hotly under her breath.

The dark-haired girl tore her gaze away from the magazine to stare at a furious Hermione as if she still couldn't believe she was real. "Filch… he's the overseer," she said softly, hope trickling back into to her eyes. "My brand acts as a Portkey. I'll be transported to a cell at 9:45, unless you let him know that there's been a change of arrangements."

Hermione nodded, her eyes still narrowed angrily, and hopped off the bed. "All right, no problem there, then. I'll go talk to the slimy little git right now. Tell him there's been a _permanent _change of arrangements. Honestly, making _human beings _sleep in a 'slave hold' - Dear God." Abruptly, she stopped muttering disgustedly to herself and quickly looked down at Pansy. "Are there very many of you who're forced to sleep down there?"

Pansy stared at her for several seconds, her eyes glistening with a depth of sadness that Hermione had once prayed that she would neverbe able to understand. Eventually, the pale-faced girl nodded heavily. "At… At least fifty," she murmured faintly.

"_Fifty!"_ Hermione exploded under her breath, shoving her feet into the ridiculously high heels with a bit more vigor than was necessarily. She hardly even winced at the pain that shot through her toes. Irritably, she fired a cushioning charm down at them, though what she really needed was a charm that followed her around at all times, ready to catch her if she tripped and fell -

"Hermione?"

Her gaze snapped upward to find that Pansy was standing rather uncertainly a few feet from her, the anxious expression on her face one of someone who desperately wanted to say something, but didn't quite know how.

Inexplicably, Hermione grasped the unvoiced words the instant that her brown eyes saw the leagues of gratefulness shining in Pansy's reserved light-colored ones, and some of the anger and frustration at the world around her drained out from her body. She opened her mouth, began to say, '_Everything's going to be alright,' _but she quickly stopped herself a breath before the words left her lips.

There was no use in making promises that she highly doubted she would be able to keep.

Instead, she wordlessly reached out and gently touched the other girl's arm in a gesture she had often used when comforting one of her friends. "I'm going to do what I can for you," she said quietly.

Pansy looked torn between hopefulness and skepticism, the forgotten fashion magazine hanging limply from her tensed hand. "Are… Are you certain that you're going to stay this way?" she whispered, her timid voice quivering slightly as she spoke.

Hermione smiled warmly at the taller girl, though, with the high-heels, they were currently around the same height. "Yeah. I am."

As if a silent understanding had passed between them, Pansy tremulously returned the smile, fighting back tears of relief. After an awkward moment, Hermione sympathetically reached out and hugged her reassuringly. "I _am, _all right?" she repeated firmly as Pansy's thin shoulders began to shake. "That, I can promise you."

_For now, anyway, _she finished silently, mentally wincing guiltily after the assurance slipped out of her mouth. After all, she had no idea of the nature of the spell that had brought her here. For all she knew, she might very well wake up and find herself back in Universe A the very next morning.

**A/N:** You guys have been fantastic. Thanks for all your support/feedback/sharing-of-thoughts, and I'm glad you didn't think the last chapter was stagnant, haha. Hopefully this gave you more of an insight to Harry… or just opened up more questions, lol.

Reviews make my day! Don't forget to leave one on your way out:-)

Cheers all.

LM


	8. Let Me

**A/N:**You've all been so patient about the whole lack of Dramione interaction that when I finished this today I figured I'd just post it rather than making you wait… I will warn you that this is another intense, graphic chapter. I'll probably be safe and rate it **R.**

**Let Me**

**Tuesday, August 29**

**9:20 P.M.**

On the verge of speaking the password to exit the Head dormitory portrait hole and head down to the dungeons, Hermione's heart almost stopped when it slid open on its own, and she narrowly suppressed a squeak of surprise as a hulking figure appeared on the other side of the entrance.

She relaxed, but only slightly, when she realized it was only Harry, who, for his part, seemed just as startled to have run into someone else in such a context. He was sweaty and flushed, his thick, messy hair even wilder than normal, as if he had just come in from Quidditch practice, but, Hermione noticed…

He was still wearing the same robes that he had sported at dinner, meaning that Universe A's Marauders' Map was most likely still inside. _Should I switch them back now? Can I even do it that fast? _she wondered as his surprised expression abruptly hardened to an icy glare. It would be a spur-of-the-moment attempt, but be sure, but -

Out of nowhere, the memory of Trelawney's words suddenly washed over her like a tidal wave:

_Tonight… Yes, tonight… The switch __**must**__ begin and end tonight…_

_Dear God,_ Hermione thought in shock. If – _If_ that could possibly be applied to the situation she was currently in… Had the old bat really been onto something?

Despite the general contempt that she held for the entire Art of Divination, Hermione had no desire to tempt Fate any more than she already may have done over the course of her tumultuous eighteen years. Given the very tiny window of time that she had to pull the exchange, she quickly swerved as she exited the portrait hold and Harry entered, deliberately bumping into him hard.

"_Christ-"_

Before Hermione had even a moment to react, Harry swore, unexpectedly whipped around, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her to him as easily as pulling about a cotton doll.

Shocked, she yelped in surprise and, with her free hand, desperately braced herself against the stone wall before she could trip over the edge of the hole and fall back into the Head Common Room. _How did Harry get this big? _she thought frantically, wincing, fear instinctively gripping her as all six feet or more of him glowered down at her with a fierceness that she had never yet encountered, even in the war. _Could the eleven years he spent with his aunt and uncle really have made that much of a height difference?_

Harry either didn't notice the pain he was causing her or didn't care, squeezing her wrist hard enough to surely cause bruising. "No matter how much you might have _on_ me, you do _not _have permission mess with me, Granger!" he hissed, sounding as furious as she had been when she had discovered Pansy's living arrangements. "Do you understand that?"

Trying not to let her expression belay her onsetting panic, Hermione gaped up at his face, red from both his earlier workout and current anger, she supposed. A second later, however, the words that she had barely heard him speak over the pounding of her racing heart and the lack of cooperation on the part of her tired brain fully registered in her mind. There was something about them… Something about them wasn't right.

Instead of feeling more panic at the snarled threat, the rationality that Hermione had worked so hard to develop came to her rescue once again, and her mind spun frenetically. His choice of wording had been very, very interesting, indeed. It may have been just that, a random choice of wording, or… it may have had more of a conscious meaning than that.

It would be taking a major leap, but…

"Let go of me," she said coolly, praying that she sounded calmer than she felt. At her words, his grip adversely tightened, but she resiliently repeated in just as even a voice, "Let go of me, Harry. _Now."_

The boy – well, man, really – who, until the past two days, had always been her best friend, stared at her for several seconds before he grudgingly but _actually_ released her hand. Rigidly, he took a jerky step back into the Common Room, a vein visibly throbbing furiously at his temple.

Quickly, Hermione pulled her right wrist to her chest and took just as quick of a rather unsteady step back from the portrait hole. It took most of her self-control to hold in her shock at his actions. Was _this_ why he had been so angry at her from the moment she'd first seen this version of him – because My was blackmailing him?

But… about what? What secret could the dark, distant son of the Sovereign State's Viceroy be so desperate to keep hidden away that he would actually obey _her_ orders?

Even though Hermione had no idea what on earth it could be, all she cared about now was that it gave her the power to keep this undeniably dangerous and powerful man away from her… at least for the moment.

"If you ever touch me like that again, understand _this,"_ she breathed slowly, and, swallowing back a tremor before it could escape into her voice, she raised her eyebrows pointedly, "I will have all the permission that I want… to do whatever I want. Got that?"

For a split second, Harry glowered at her with the ferocity of a thousand suns, then spun, slamming the portrait hole behind him.

The whoosh of air the action produced in its wake lightly caressed Hermione's face, the gentle touch all but leaving her with the desire to sink into the ground and begin to sob. Slowly, she surrendered to the first urge, and her legs all but gave out as she sank to her knees. Gritting her teeth, she looked down at her throbbing wrist, her hand shaking slightly.

_Oh God… I can't keep doing this… I can't…_

_You have to. You have no other choice._

And she really didn't.

Hermione bit her lip and shook out her aching hand, wincing slightly. Sighing, she swiftly blinked back any burning at the back of her eyes and slowly gathered her thoughts. A moment later, she sighed, heavily pushed herself to her feet, and mechanically started off in the direction of the dungeons, dully fingering a now perfectly working Marauders' Map in the pocket of her robe.

**9:40 P.M.**

"No, it's alright, I've found… _other_ uses for her," Hermione purred airily to the oily-looking old man who was leaning, arms crossed, against the iron-clad entrance to the dungeons before her. She hadn't been able to actually see inside the dungeons themselves because he'd come out the moment she'd knocked. She giggled loudly, a skill that had taken her more than ten minutes to prefect during lunch that day. "If you know what I mean."

Argus Filch didn't smile. He _leered,_ his breath smelling suspiciously like alcohol. "That I do, missy," he said, brushing some greasy hair of out his wizened face as he peered down at her in the very dim lighting like he was in dour need of a pair of glasses. "Off the list she goes, then- for now, anyway, eh?" As if he thought he'd just cracked the most hilarious joke on the planet, he chucked twistedly and used his wand to draw a line across the long piece of parchment in his hands.

Hermione narrowly suppressed a shudder at Filch's disturbing laugher, and she took a few cagey steps back from the dreary dungeon entrance and the man who was, apparently, king of it. "Well, I hope you have a simply _lovely_ evening," she said in an exaggeratedly earnest voice, smiling at him insincerely.

She didn't expect him to reply in genuine earnestness. "Oh, I plan ta, Lady Evans," he said with another of his pleased leers. Simply imagining the most likely sinister connotations behind his words, it took all of Hermione's self-control to rein in her lurching stomach. "You and yer slave, er…" He paused, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "You have a good 'un yerself."

_Good Lord, you slimy git, and just what do you think we're going to do? _she thought in disgust, inadvertently using Ron's typical Snape description. Shivering slightly as another blast of frigid air slipped past the ironclad doors and into the hall, despite the rather warm outdoor temperatures, she gave Filch a forced, sickly sweet smile, turned away, and let out a short snort. _Creep._

She strode away as quickly as she could, given her very narrow choice of shoes, in an attempt to put as much distance between herself and Filch as fast as possible. Tiredly taking the Marauders' Map from her pocket once more, she tapped it with a mutter of the usual password, absently rubbing her aching wrist where Harry had grabbed it earlier. If anything, she was curious to see which students of this Universe were inclined to run about after hours.

Of course, the first section of the map she inadvertently flipped to was that of the Vampire statue area, **Lucius Malfoy **still boldly hovering above it. Her stomach turned when she saw it, and she quickly shifted the map to another location in an attempt to put off dealing with the subject. Really, what could she do about it? She wasn't here to get involved, she didn't have enough information to get involved, and, frankly, she was afraid she had no idea of the can of worms she might open if she tried to.

Surprisingly, the hallways were rather devoid of students, except for two dots in the kitchens labeled **Dennis Creevey **and **Jimmy Peakes. **

_Little troublemakers, _she thought with a small smile, fondly recalling the cute little boy who, unfortunately, was related to the rather overzealous, Harry-worshipping Colin Creevey… but the smile froze on her lips as she remembered that neither boy would probably be anything like the ones she had remembered.

She sighed and returned her gaze to the Map as she treaded her way down corridors so well-known she could probably maneuver them blindfolded. With a distinct pang of longing for the two boys who normally roamed these exact halls at her side, her gaze was invariably drawn to the Gryffindor Tower. It was obvious that most of the House had turned in for the night, as most of the labeled dots were bunched in the dormitory areas.

Then her gaze shifted to the common room.

As it did, the familiar names of several students came into focus, including **Neville Longbottom**,** Dean Thomas**, and a certain **Ronáld Weasley**… and they were all clustered around a single dot marked **Draco Malfoy**.

_Oh, damn. _

Abruptly, Hermione's heart gave an abnormal lurch in her chest and then began to pound faster. Halting swiftly, she squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to calm down, to quell the intense feeling of agitation that had almost instantly set into her stomach at the sight. The part of her that valued self-preservation screamed at her to forget it, to walk on, to pretend she'd never even looked at that area of the Marauders' Map…

But it was too late.

Because she _had._

And she wasn't stupid. With that particular group of individuals, arranged in the particular way that they were on the Map, she had little doubt as to what might have been – and most likely was - happening in her old common room. And dear God, it wasn't as if she approved – Merlin knew she was the farthest thing from it! – but…

Her newly regularly chant, one that she wouldn't have dreamed to use in Universe A, again began to repeat itself in her mind. She couldn't get involved in this! Not only did she hardly even know the Draco Malfoy of this world, the odds were ugly, and they were against her! Even if she _did_ try to help Draco Malfoy, in this world, he was as good as a slave. Not only was she was leagues above him socially, she supposedly couldn't stand him! So just how was she supposed to walk in there and tell them to stop doing to him whatever the bloody hell it was they might have been doing without utterly breaking from My-character?

Biting her lip indecisively, Hermione hovered, torn, outside the first-floor hallway for at least a minute and a half. She was so tired, so tired, and her arm and several other areas of her body positively ached from Harry's decision to slam her into a wall. All she wanted to do was crawl back to her bedroom, set up a cot for Pansy, and sleep…. sleep…

Until an all-too-recent memory of a blood-covered eighteen-year-old in a cage assaulted her mind for about the twentieth time since she'd seen Draco Malfoy the previous day.

Abruptly, a rush of anger swept through her, not at the idea of what was happening in the Gryffindor common room, but at _herself.__ Merlin be damned, what in the bloody hell is __**wrong**__ with me? _After all, she was Hermione Granger, the so-called Champion of underdogs, Queen of lost causes! SPEW was enough proof of that! She _helped _people and other living things; it was what she did, one of the things that drove her very existence.

Resolutely, she turned herself toward Gryffindor Tower and began to walk, fairly disgusted that she had hesitated for so long. She had no idea of what she would do if Ronáld and his gaggle of Gryffindors were harassing Malfoy. She had no idea of what she _could_ do. But God help her, she couldn't let whatever was happening in that common room go on, not when she had the power to do _something._

She would just have to figure what that something was before she got there, and pray that she wouldn't, literally, get caught in the act.

_Right, Hermione, _her weary mind thought bleakly. _Better start figuring fast._

10:11 P.M.

To anyone in the Gryffindor common room who was not yet in his or her respective dorm, the celebrated arrival of new Head Girl My Evans was nothing out of the ordinary.

Instantly, a gaggle of seventh and eighth year girls (the extra year added to make up for the one lost during the war) hovered about the ground she walked on, chatting about boys, clothes, and life, and fighting to be the one with whom My agreed. As My brushed them all off, as usual, all boys present stopped whatever they were doing and stared – or drooled unattractively, more specifically.

And really, how could they not? The girl had been on the cover of Witches' Vogue twice, more recently just that summer for being crowned the Most Beautiful Woman of the Sovereignty (counter to Sirius Black's Man), and, of course, there was that little way she wore her uniform, walked, talked, _breathed –_

Little did they know how different she really was.

_Honestly, don't they have anything better to do?_ Hermione thought irately, giving Lavender, Parvati, and Ginevra a thoroughly insincere smile before looking away and rolling her eyes. After she had sufficiently hidden the map, she had rolled up her skirt several times, shot a volumizing and revitalizing spell she had years earlier picked up from Parvati into her hair, lifted the collar of her uniform oxford shirt, and unbuttoned the top three buttons of it, hoping that would be adequate enough to work the 'My' charm.

Apparently, it was.

Ignoring everyone else, Hermione turned her focus on the world around her. Raucous voices, most of them masculine, had exploded into her hearing the second she had entered the familiar-looking common room, as well as loud, pounding rock music. In surprise, her eyes quickly looked for a live band, but found none. Instead, they landed on a large boom box sitting boldly on top of the mantle. A boom box that looked very Muggle.

She blinked in shock, and, in another figurative punch, nearly did a double-take when she saw an equally massive-screened television sitting on the carpet nearby…. when a shout interrupted her.

"Oi, ev'one, look 'ere! The party's fine'ly started; My Evans's off an' decided'a visit us!!"

Almost immediately, Hermione's keen hearing picked up on the very obvious slur to the familiar male voice. _Is he __**drunk?**_

It took her eyes a moment to identify the trim, leagues less awkward and newly christened "Ville" standing in the midst of a thick crowd of mostly upperclassmen boys gathered near the fireplace, many of whom were holding slim, dark glass bottles: some of them, Hermione recognized as Butterbeer, while others, though, most certainly were not.

Immediately, most of said boys' heads swiveled toward her, and rather overzealous bellows of greeting subsequently erupted.

"My! Com'on an' join the party!"

"Check this out, it's _'larious!"_

"Bloody 'ell, bitch, what took yeh so damn long?"

Hermione bristled angrily, but, luckily, none of them seemed to notice. The last call was from Dean, who she could only see because his tall head poked out above most of the other boys. As she narrowly suppressed giving a scathing remark in return, he turned toward her, smirking broadly, shoved his bottle into the air in a toast, then swayed and nearly fell over from the force of this own actions.

The boys around him laughed loudly, slapping him on the back.

_Good Merlin! They're all flat-out wasted! Ooo, if I wasn't supposed to be a faux-Head Girl, I would bloody well have them all expelled… _

"Fine'ly foun' time'a make a – a return trip'a the Motherhouse, eh?" Ville continued loudly, a slight smirk tugging at his lip as he swaggered unsteadily out toward her from amongst the general horde. He swung his arm out in a broad circle, as if making a grand gesture of annoyance. "That's more'n I can say for the - the _other_ one'a you Head people. L-Lord – Lord Wan'-up-'is-arse _Evans."_

"Sorry, I was primping," Hermione snapped automatically before she quickly reined in her tongue. Luckily, Neville's call and its subsequent domino effect gave her an excuse to shake the girls tailing her, and she cautiously made her way closer to the boys. From what she had seen on the Marauder's Map, it was obvious to her that Malfoy must have been at the crowd's center. The question was…. How in the bloody hell was she going to get to him?

Her mind was momentarily distracted as the abnormally suave Ville looked her up and down, his smirk widening. "Well, it was cert'ly worth the wait, then," he breathed in a low voice.

Before she could respond to _that,_ another collective shout erupted from the boys behind him, one that was followed by a wave of roaring laughter. Hermione's stomach lurched, and she was struck was a desperate desire to shove Ville out of the way and literally try to get to the center of what was going on. Luckily – or unluckily - before she could succumb to the rash course of action, an unmistakable head of red pushed though the depths of the throng.

"Budge up, c'mon, outta m'way, yeh little berks – My, pet!" Ronáld breathlessly exclaimed over the hard rock beat as he emerged, sounding as if the mild physical effort had been too much of a workout for his aristocratic self. He shot Neville a venomous look, and the latter laughed and held up his hands, swiveling back toward the crowd. Leaving Hermione face-to-face with the new nightmare of her thoroughly screwed-up life: a slicked back, slimy Ronáld Weasley.

"Finally com'ma see me, then, eh?" he continued, looking pleased.

She took a deep breath and pasted a thoroughly bored expression on her face. _And__ here we go. _

"Tosh," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I missed the common room, is all." Turning her back on him, she slunk around in a small circle, pretending to take in the golds and reds around her as if she hadn't seen them for years. "The Head dorms are just so _big…_ and _lonely…"_

She stiffened, then forced herself to relax as Ronáld caught her up around the waist from behind and brought his head down alongside hers. Almost instantly, a nauseating, nearly overpowering scent of alcohol radiated through her senses, and she swallowed hard to keep her dinner in her stomach as he purred in a manner that she assumed he thought was seductive, "Sure it jus' wasn't _me_ you were lonely for, pet?"

"FIN'IGAN! _That_ was a good'un!"

More loud laughter interrupted her response. From the experience she's had observing Slytherins in Universe A, continuously raucous laughter was never a good sign, and it was usually always at someone else's expense.

In an almost satirical reversal, she was more than certain that, here, that "someone" was Draco Malfoy.

_**Shit.**__ Come on, Hermione! Focus on the endgame! _

"Quite," she replied sweetly, though her heart had began to pound rather rapidly. Swiftly, lithely, she slid out of his grip before his stickily hot breath could burn a hole in her neck, prancing ahead of him to the outer edge of the group of boys. She paused, and then, thinking quickly, glanced back at him and pouted. "Oh, _Ronáld, _you haven't been having fun _without_ me, have you?"

Ronáld laughed and shook his head. "Oh, nothin' _you'd _find fun, pet. Y'know, gettin' your hands dir'y and all'a that." Smirking, he heavily rested his hand around the back of Hermione's neck, thankfully not feeling the need to progress any closer than that. "C'mon, you'll think i-it's funny, though." He started to head back into the crowd, his grip on her basically forcing her to walk forward when he did.

_How lovely. I'm being led about like cattle, _she thought sarcastically, but reluctantly let him steer her through the small group of boys. At least it was getting her where she needed to go. Her eyes quickly scanned ahead for Malfoy as her so-called boyfriend swatted at the smirking boys clustered around the large hearth of the fireplace. "Come on, c'mon, you lot, off wi' yeh, you got a whole year'a do this..."

With several pointedly loud grumbles, the group of them grudgingly scattered, or more aptly, stumbled away –

For a split second, Hermione didn't see anything except one wide, gray eye staring straight up into hers, the other swollen shut and bruised a deep greenish black. But, just as quickly, the eye closed and the gaze was broken, and Hermione eyes widened in unconditional horror as they took in the full scope of the sight before her.

The Marauder's Map had again not let her down; Draco Malfoy was slumped on the ground right next to the fire, and his hands, chained above his head to the wall, were probably the only reason he was still partially upright. With the graphic memory of his beaten, bloodied appearance the night before still fresh in her mind, Hermione would have never imagined that he could look worse than what he had then.

But, for one of the few times in her life, she was wrong.

On top of the now-dried blood, dirt, bruises, and absolute filth darkening every inch of his body, his ragged shirt had been lost between the night before and then. Where it had been were patches of badly burned skin – many all over his chest, which was heaving raggedly, as if he was struggling to breathe. Standing out starkly amongst all the painful-looking marks, however, was a very large **S**, which she could only assume stood for Slytherin, that had been seared in the dead center of his chest,. An even larger **X** had been burned through it, as if to cross it out.

For a moment, she felt as if she'd been sucked into the vacuum inside a seashell, an empty space in the middle of a crowded room. She distantly registered that the loud, almost painful booming of the radio has been turned off and replaced with the obvious sounds of a television. She hardly noticed Ronáld move his arm from around her neck to around her shoulders, taking a lazy swig from the bottle in his other hand. He spoke again, but whatever he said was like a bee buzzing in the distance to her ears.

This wasn't right; this couldn't be legal; this… this was _beyond _inhuman! More obvious injuries were becoming apparent now: his right leg was twisted at an abnormal angle, the bone above his knee obviously broken badly, and something – something just wasn't right about the way he was breathing…

Oh dear God, if someone didn't heal him soon, and it didn't look like Ronáld or anyone else around would, his injuries appeared so serious that she had absolutely no doubt that he might truly die.

_But what could she do?_

_This place is __**sick,**_ she thought fiercely, using all the willpower within her to keep an expression of detached interest on her face. She knew she'd give herself away if she allowed the absolute revulsion she was feeling to surface on her expression. She was suddenly hyperactively aware of Ronáld's arm around her and desperately wanted to be free of it; she was about to yank herself from under his grasp when he, thankfully, let go himself.

With his now-free hand, he drew his wand with a drunken flourish and pointed it at Malfoy. " 'Ey. Look'et this, pet."

Or not so thankfully.

Ronáld slurred out a spell that Hermione was completely unfamiliar with but translated to 'flame writer,' even though his pronunciation was rather dodgy. A lick of fire flew from the fireplace and hovered for a moment in front of them. As if he was concentrating immensely, Ronáld slowly gestured with his wrist, and the flame moved to the left side of Malfoy's thin face like a bludger to a seeker. The moment it touched his cheek, Malfoy instantly stiffened and his eye momentarily flew open, a sharp, muffled gasp of pain escaping his lips.

"It's sorta a-artistic, eh?" Ronáld asked her with a casual grin, then laughed and looked back down at Malfoy, whose good eye had squeezed back shut, his jaw clenched in pain as the fire continued to sear what appeared to be a block letter across his skin. "Now ev'yone'll know yeh b'long t'me, yeh sodding piece'a -"

At that moment, Hermione recovered enough from the sheer shock of what was happening before her eyes to instinctively grab Ronáld's wand arm, violently wrenching it off path and effectively ending the spell. And blatantly defending Malfoy.

Too late, she realized what exactly she'd just done. Swiftly, she snatched her hand away, but the greasy-haired redhead had already stopped laughing. Two trains of thought were screaming though her head: the first being _Oh bugger, oh bugger – __**stupid,**__ Hermione, stupid!,_ versus the solid sense of moral relief that she had stopped the torture of another human being… even if it had given her away.

Swiftly, she tried to think of an excuse as Ronáld looked down at his wand hand, his brow furrowed deeply, and then looked over at her.

_I'm feeling faint… I just remembered I left my extra make-up set at home… I - _

Ironically enough, it was Draco Malfoy who saved her then.

_"Fuck… _you, Weasley," he choked out hoarsely, his chest heaving as he gasped in erratic gulps of air.

A large, sloppy **W** was now boldly burned into his left cheek.

Ronáld's attention was instantly drawn away from her. "Oh, sun'ly so bold, are yeh? _CRUCIO!"_

The spell was short, as he was probably too drunk to remember how to hold it on, but it hit Malfoy squarely in the chest, and Hermione cringed as he violently slammed backward into the wall, the side of his head cracking loudly against it. Her own heart was pounding so loudly in her chest; she could barely breathe; simply being _witness _to this and not being able to do one blasted thing about it made her head feel as if it were about to explode -

_I can Stun him. I can Stun Ronáld, blast the rest of the arseholes running about here out of my way, and go hide with Malfoy in the Room of Requirements. _

Except someone here probably already knew about the Room of Requirements already. And didn't Pansy say that all Hermione had to do was say Pansy's name, and she would appear? So wouldn't that ability apply to Ronáld with Malfoy as well, making some form of 'stealing' him impossible?

"Tryin'a show off for _my_ girlfriend, eh?" Ronáld continued without notice. He looked over at her, and she tried to focus on him rather than the fact that Malfoy had suddenly gone completely limp, blood streaming down the right side of side of his face. "Y'know, you ri'lly should 'ave a go at 'em, My. What with 'ow 'e asked yeh to the Ball an' all. P-Pissed the _'ell_ outta yeh."

"Wha - Huh." Suddenly, an idea – granted, a rather far-fetched idea, but one better than blasting Ronáld out of the way, taking Malfoy, and trying to make a run for it – struck her, and Hermione pounced on it before it had the chance to get away.

Quickly, she pasted a bright smile across her face and tucked her arm in his. "Why Ronáld, that is a_ wonderful _idea."

The redhead started to nod smugly, as if to agree, but stopped pregnantly, frowning. A second later, he jerked and squinted down at her as her words actually sunk in, astonishment scrawled across his face. _"Wha'?"_

"Oh, you _are_ a genius!" Hermione went on cheerfully, playing the part on for all she was worth. "I've had an absolutely dreadful day. I mean, after Divination, I broke a nail!" Behind her back, she hastily ripped off the longest section of the nail on her ring finger and then held up with for him. Putting on the same spoilt-girl pout that she had often seen the Pansy Parkinson of her world wear, she smirked down at Draco, who hadn't moved from his disturbingly lifeless position, save his heaving chest. "Tonight, I could do for a little… _private_ torture."

She almost choked on the words as they left her mouth.

The lanky eighteen-year-old's expression had turned to that of a dismayed little boy whose favorite toy had just been taken from him. "But - But tonigh' you're suppose'a be _mine!"_

_Huh, I really don't recall agreeing to that… _

"Oh, but Ronáld, you just said I could have him! And it really would make me feel better, pleeaase?" Absently reaching up to make sure her collar was still popped, she forced herself to step right up to him and slowly ran her hand up and down his arm and around to his back, then pushed herself up on tiptoe, leaning right up to his ear to whisper, "And then… maybe tomorrow…"

She trailed off in a manner she hoped was suggestive and smiling coyly, but alarm bells went off when his head shot down to hers in an attempt to snog, taking advantage of her face's close proximity to his. Swiftly, she disgustedly yanked herself away and danced a step out of his reach in case he decided he wanted to pounce her. "I promise I'll give him back when I'm done!" she added innocently, trying not to sound as if she was begging.

"_My!" _he whined in a voice so tortured that, if she had had to respond to it with no idea of who was speaking or the background context behind it, she would have actually felt sorry for him. But she was fully aware that this universe's Ronáld Weasley was synonymous with more vile names than even Mrs. Weasley could _scourgify_ out of Mundungus Fletcher's mouth, and she shook her head in response to his unspoken entreaty.

"Give me him," she gestured toward Malfoy, raised her eyebrow, and smirked slightly, "and I'll give you a kiss."

He went silent, as if deeply pondering the possibility of this exchange. Hermione held her breath, the only other sounds in the common room the low, muttered laughing of a few boys who had remained in the armchairs in front of the television, bangs and loud, violent noises from the television itself, and Malfoy's uneven breaths. _Please God… Please work… Please…_

After several seconds, Ronáld looked up, though he didn't exactly look delighted as he fumbled with something on his wrist. "Alright, My. _F-Fine._ You can have 'em." He got whatever it was on his wrist off, and Hermione saw that it was a gold-plated watch, which took him three times to shove into her hands.

She started at it blankly, completely at a loss as to why he was giving her this and not Malfoy. It was a Wizex, the most expensive brand of Wizarding watches available, but she assumed that, in this case, it was supposed to have some other significance. "Gee… _thanks,"_ she said carefully, trying to hold back an injection of sarcasm.

Now Ronáld was the one pouting, obviously not happy about the situation, and he lowered a finger on her sternly. "Bring'um back t'morrow."

At once, Hermione had a flash of insight into the watch: Pansy had said, earlier, that one of the stipulations of the House-Witch bond was that she could be summoned at will by her owner. Perhaps the person who was doing the summoning had to have a key that linked the two. A wand acted as a summoning channel for House-Elves, who could pop into appearance around any wizard, but maybe around humans who were only being made to act as House-Elves, a different kind of key had to be used?

She prayed that she was right.

"Of course I will. Oh, Ronáld, _thank_ you!" she exclaimed again, shoving a bit more happy enthusiasm behind it now that she had a faint idea of the watch's significance.

Clutching the Wizex, she hastily turned toward the portrait hole, hoping she could summon Malfoy directly to her once she made it to the hallway, rather than try to demonstrate a use of her magic by carrying him out. She had only walked a step when she was abruptly yanked to a stop as Ronáld grabbed her arm in a vice-like grip.

"Now, 'bout tha' kiss," he breathed in a low voice, pulling her back to him.

_Don't __**touch **__me, you sick bastard! _

For the first time that night, a jolt of pure panic at her _own _immediate safety stabbed through her stomach, her heart pounding frenetically. Frantically, she tried to wrench herself from his grasp, but he was holding on too tight -

_Oh God, what would My do, what would… ?_

Thinking fast, Hermione kissed her fingers and then pressed them to Ronáld's lips a second before his mouth was on hers, using the same motion to shove his face away from hers. In an action that was probably only momentarily delayed because of his intoxication level, his eyes flew opened, and he pulled back and gaped at her like she had suddenly turned into a foreign species of a domestic plant as he realized what she'd done – or, in this case,_ didn't _do.

Taking full advantage of his surprise, she managed to wiggle out of his grip without looking too desperate about it, and she nearly tripped over a footrest and two coffee tables in her haste to move safely away. When she was confident she'd cleared nearly half the common room, she winked at a very confused-looking Ronáld.

"I said I'd kiss you, Ronáld, but I didn't say _how,"_ she purred teasingly with a breathy laugh. He still looked absolutely baffled, as if he honestly couldn't believe she had just done something like that to _him,_ and she forced a giggle. "Oh, Ronnie, you didn't think you'd get _that _lucky, did you?"

Giving him one last perky smile, Hermione turned on her heel and flounced toward the portrait hole, noting with some relief that Ginevra, Lavender and company had decided to retire for the evening.

"That's dead sexy, that girl is," she heard Seamus comment bluntly from in front of the television, its screen flashing in an almost three-dimensional manner as some sort of building exploded.

His words seemed to knock the possessive redhead into motion. "Don' even t-t-think 'bout it, tha' is_ all_ mine," Ronáld growled loudly enough for every male still remaining in the emptying-out Common Room to hear, most likely. _"My!"_he barked.

_Sweet Merlin, all I have to do is make it to the bloody door!_

Hermione's blood pounded in her ears as she 'coolly' glanced back over her shoulder in time to see him drunkenly lunge after her… and gracelessly fall over the same footrest that she had a minute earlier narrowly managed to avoid.

_Oh thank God._

She literally dove out the portrait hole to gales of laughter behind her, though none of it sounded like it belonged to Ronáld. The cool air of the stone corridor felt heavenly as it slammed into her face; the Gryffindor common room had literally been as hot as hell. As soon as she hit the stone floor, she didn't stop moving. Transforming her heels into flats, her mind on overdrive, she took off down the dark corridor.

Within thirty seconds, she'd made it to the nearest side passageway and skidded to a stop halfway down it; without pausing to catch her breath, praying, _praying_ that the Wizex was what she thought it was, she tightly gripped the solid gold wristband and said in a clear but hushed voice, "Draco Malfoy!"

In less than a second, the young man who she never dreamed she'd be fighting to save popped into appearance as if he'd simply Apparated there. His hands were still chained, but not to the wall, and the heavy metal was the first to drop as he slumped fully to the stone floor, visibly and audibly struggling to breathe.

_Thank you Merlin, I was right, _she thought in relief. Bending double, she rested her forearms on her knees, panting heavily, and allowed herself to momentarily recover from both the sprint and the traumatic intensity of the past half hour.

She knew she didn't have much time. She was afraid she was going to have a great deal of running around to do that night, and she wanted to be done with it all before Ronáld had even begun to feel the start of a hangover.

Although the only thing she really wanted to do at that point was find the nearest soft patch of ground and collapse onto it, she took one last slow breath of air and focused on Malfoy. The passage was dark, only a thin sliver of moonlight slipping down it from the main, window-lined hallway, and, pocketing the watch, Hermione drew her wand as she crouched down in front of him.

"Lumos," she muttered.

Under even the dim light of the wand, he still looked in devastatingly bad shape. Doing her best to block the sheer emotional response his injuries provoked in her, she swiftly and objectively evaluated them once more, or what she could see of them from his sprawled position on the ground. She had some healing experience, it was true, but she was more than afraid a trip to the Hospital Wing would be absolutely necessary. The broken leg, she would probably be able to fix, but for the burns, she needed a healing cream, and that was already something she didn't have.

The thing that worried her the most, though, was the decidedly abnormal, gasping sound his breaths made whenever he sucked in a sharp gulp of air. Though she was by no means a Mediwitch, she had certainly perused more than a few medical books in her day, and she was truly afraid that one of his lungs had been punctured in the abuse. If that was the case, then Madam Pomfrey was the only one who could help him, and she would need to help him very, very soon.

"Malfoy. Malfoy, how long have you been breathing like this?" she hissed urgently, hastily throwing a cagey glance over her shoulder toward the main hallway.

Weakly, he lifted his head to stare at her with his good eye, his jaw clenched in obviously horribly intense pain. "Why – Why the - _hell_ are you - helping me?" he faintly croaked out between wheezing gasps of air rather than answering her question.

For a moment, his response was enough to trigger to the forefront of her memory a vision of the ungrateful blighter of a Malfoy she knew and loathed. "Believe me, Malfoy, now is _not _the time to ask questions!" she snapped irritatedly.

At pure force behind her words, he shrank backward into the wall, coughing hoarsely, and guilt flooded her._Bloody hell, Hermione, stop it! Don't be like them; remember, he isn't one of them anymore, he isn't the Malfoy who as good as killed Dumbledore, who you despised…_

She forced herself to take a deep breath, to slow down, to breathe.

"Listen, I'm sorry," she said after a second. "I'm just... a little stressed at the moment." Though Malfoy didn't move in response, she muttered her favorite healing spell on the ugly, bleeding gash near his forehead that he'd gotten after Ronáld's Cruciatus Curse. "And I'm helping you because I can," she said quietly as the faint orange glow settled around it, closing the wound. "And that's really the only answer I can give you."

The gray eye exhaustedly cracked opened again, wordlessly staring up at her. Hermione met the gaze for a moment, but she quickly shook herself and snapped back into overdrive, moving on to his upper body. If he wasn't going to tell her, then she was going to have to evaluate it herself.

Gingerly reaching out, she gently pressed two fingers against the left side of his chest, being careful to avoid any of the burns. The dirt-covered skin was gritty, sweaty under her fingers, but he gave no physical response to her prodding.

"Good," Hermione muttered… but then she moved on to the right side. As soon as she gave it the slightest bit of pressure, the Slytherin gasped sharply, the breath painfully deep, yet, at the same time, visibly not giving him enough air, and began to cough uncontrollably again. _Not good._

"Bugger, it has to be…" She trailed off and sat back. Most of his more minor injuries and even the broken leg, she could heal, but the lung, broken ribs, and burns of that magnitude, she couldn't, not without the right potions. Swiftly, she snapped into action, purposefully pushing herself to her feet and pointing her wand at him. "Okay, we're going to the Hospital Wing."

"Won't… help me…" he breathed faintly and with an alarming amount of difficulty.

"Ohhh yes they will." With a flick of her wrist, Hermione levitated him into the air. Hurriedly pulling out the Marauder's Map from where she'd shrunk it and stuck it down her shirt, she hastily pored over the route to Hospital Wing, but the nearest floating label was **Charity Burbage** two floors down -

"Granger!" She nearly dropped the Map as Malfoy suddenly grabbed her wrist with both of his chained hands with a strength she didn't expect from anyone in his physical condition. She looked at him quickly, and his unswollen gray eye desperately met hers. _"Please… _just_ let - me - __**die,"**_ he breathed fiercely, a sharp, struggling gasp of air punctuated between each word.

It was the last thing Hermione had ever expected to hear him – or anyone else, for that matter - say.

Her mouth dropped, and she stared at him, at a complete and utter loss for words. The bottom fell out of her stomach, and she suddenly was unable to breathe herself.

He had put more energy behind those three words than she had ever heard him use, and there was an absolute, fierce sincerity in every pleading aspect of his expression that told her he was dead serious. And, honestly, a part of her… a part of her somewhat understood. He was suffering horribly, and, even if she had him healed now, the cruel cycle would just begin again when Ronáld got him back.

This was probably his only way – his only chance – to escape.

But then the will to live, the same will that had gotten her though the last year of the war, took control as it always had; screamed in her ear: _No! No, damn it! Giving up is not the answer! __**Dying**__ is not the bloody answer! _

There was no certainty that Dumbledore was going to rule the world forever. For as Dark as the world was, a possibility of hope still existed. What if something changed; what if Dumbledore died of old age and the totalitarian society abruptly ended; what if, somehow, the entire situation transformed and everyone who had once thought they had nothing left at all were given a chance for a new life?

God help her, she didn't care if what she did next was right or wrong… but she couldn't just stand by and watch him die.

Finally, Hermione found her voice, though it took her a moment to figure out how to use it. _"No,"_ she whispered.

Malfoy stared at her for a moment more, but the desperation in his gaze was visibly crushed by the single word. After a moment, though, his eye rolled back, and he limply slumped in the air, though he was still breathing irregularly. Honestly, his loss of consciousness was probably long overdue.

For another minute, Hermione stood frozen, her eyes distant, her heart still pounding with the enormity of the decision of life or death that she had just made for him. _Good Merlin, Hermione, don't just sit there! _her mind finally yelled, causing her feet to mechanically start moving out of the passageway, taking Draco Malfoy with her._ Go!_

Because if she didn't make it to the Hospital Wing very quickly, his request might very well come true.

**A/N:** I promise that the rest of their interactions won't be this intense. And I know that things are really dark now, but they will get, um, slightly happier fairly soon. Thank you so much for all of your lovely reviews for the last chapter so far. I got this chapter up fast because I just finished it and I really wanted to see what y'all thought of it, so this means the next chapter probably won't be up for a while… but you got a double dose this weekend!!

Again, I apologize if some of the words are crammed together; it happens during downloading and I'm having a hard time trying to access the editing feature.

Reviews make my day! Don't forget to leave one on your way out:-)

Cheers all.

LM


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